Goke Olubusi and Dimeji Sofowora met in school and had already sold a business before deciding to focus on healthcare. Together with Tito Ovia, who has a background in global health initiatives, they founded Helium Health with a mission to improve Africa’s healthcare industry. “We as Africans have abandoned our fiduciary responsibility for improving our own healthcare sector,” says Goke. The founders took a road trip around Nigeria, driving from one hospital to the next, listening to the needs of doctors and hospital owners and learning about the market. With this knowledge, they created a subscription platform for medical records and hospital management. In recognition of Africa’s particular challenges, they built a system that can be used offline, that is affordable and that doesn’t require extensive training to implement and use. The platform stores information and proactively educates hospitals about trends like changes in patient numbers and revenue.

Helium Health has grown its network to over five hundred 500 health facilities in Africa & the Middle East.. When the COVID-19 crisis began, the company accelerated the launch of its telemedicine platform, enabling patients to continue to receive care and healthcare providers to receive revenue during the lockdown. The company also provided state governments in Nigeria with public health emergency response technology to help manage the pandemic.

Helium Health’s founders were aggressive in obtaining initial funding and began their search by guessing the email addresses of potential investors. They secured three local angel investors but most of their initial capital came from being accepted into the Y Combinator accelerator and gaining access to investors including Tencent.