SPRING transforming lives of adolescent girls across South Asia, East Africa

SPRING is an accelerator for businesses seeking to innovate and make a significant positive impact on the lives of adolescent girls across East Africa and South Asia.

SPRING, backed by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), the Nike Foundation, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), identifies and supports businesses that can bring life-enhancing products and services to girls.

SPRING transforms the lives of adolescent girls by creating sustainable markets for life-enhancing products and services. These products and services help girls keep safe, learn, earn, and save without harm.

SPRING Accelerator identifies companies with products and services that can improve the lives of girls, and provides expertise in business growth, investment readiness, human-centred design, innovation, and marketing to help drive their businesses further.

By 2019 SPRING aims to reach 200,000 girls in 9 countries.

SPRING BUSINESSES IN PAKISTAN

SEHAT KAHANI

Sehat Kahani (Story of Health) provides affordable health care to low income families in rural and urban slum communities in Pakistan.

Sehat Kahani connects patients to qualified female doctors through virtual, online consultations. Patients can access this service at one of their community telemedicine E-Hub clinics. In conservative areas, many women are unable to leave their house, so they can connect to a doctor from their own home facilitated by one of SehatKahani’s computer equipped community healthcare workers (E-Spokes).

In February 2017 Sehat Kahani acquired all of doctHERs'clinical operations, assets, team, and partnerships. This acquisition constitutes a proven operating track record of two years. Sehat Kahani now owns and operates 9 clinics in Sindh, Punjab and KPK.

The team has provided telemedicine to 28,000 patients and reached more than 250,000 indirect lives over the course of the last 2 years. Out of the number of patients coming to the clinics, 20-30% of patients are adolescent girls under the age of 20 who are young mothers.

DOT & LINE

The Dot & The Line is a high quality, low cost, scalable educational product for students aged 8 - 13.

It allows children to gain mastery in mathematics and improve their literacy in after school tuition groups. The product is delivered through female only franchisees, providing women with an opportunity for meaningful, home based employment and increasing financial independence. The Dot and The Line franchise provides home based women tutors with a standard, high quality package including training and curriculum in the form of workbooks and a digital app that uses quizzes and games to monitor students’ progress.

Franchisees charge a monthly fee to parents for 2 or 3 classes per week. The price point and geographical locations are aimed at lower to middle income students. The curriculum has been tested in a central Dot and The Line club over the last two years. The team are working with the SPRING Accelerator to design the franchise package for launch in 2017.

UPTRADE GOATS GOR WATER

UpTrade provides alternative financing mechanisms enabling cash-poor communities to buy essential household assets such as solar water-pumps, solar home systems and solar cookstoves.

Households pay for the products with goats which UpTrade then sells for a profit. UpTrade has successfully piloted their goat financing mechanism in five rural communities, where solar water pumps now bring water to 2,500 people.

They have introduced a Pay As You Go model, where households can finance purchases of solar home systems, solar TVs and radios with goats every six months over an 18 month period. UpTrade field officers vet the goats for quality control, keeping them for two weeks until they can be sold in bulk to an abattoir while building a stock for Eid Ul-Azha.

There is a huge demand from rural households for solar water, lighting and cooking products. UpTrade is working with solar tech partners that identify the pipeline of customers who want products and can pay with goats. This B2B approach will enable faster scale up. They are planning to expand this model with key equipment, technology and market partnerships in place.