USAID announces 11 winners of cohort II of Yash Entrepreneurs Program

The United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership: India-Yash project, along with Villgro, has selected its second cohort of social enterprises for the Yash Entrepreneurs Program.

The India-Yash project is led by Jhpiego, a Johns Hopkins Affiliate.

According to a press release, the programme will support enterprises to focus on how youth and adolescents can access quality family planning and sexual reproductive health (FP/SRH) services. It will provide each enterprise technical assistance and support of up to Rs 10 lakh to develop content around SRH/FP, conduct pilots, and validate products/services through community trials.

They will also get access to mentoring and advisory services around product development and testing, marketing, customer acquisition, intellectual property, and regulatory matters, and fundraising.

The latest cohort features 11 enterprises. These include:

Avni Consumer Care Products Private Limited: This is a feminine care and hygiene startup that makes tested, functional, and sustainable products for intimate hygiene, menstruation, and incontinence suited for each body type.

Bala Triple E Care LLP: Project Baala is a Delhi-based organisation working on innovative menstrual health solutions primarily in rural India, Nepal, Ghana, and Tanzania. Led by Cornell and Warwick University alumni, Baala has directly benefited over 3.5 lakh women and girls in the past five years.

GTA Solutions Private Limited: Branded as Evolve, the company has 400,000+ users worldwide, It is committed to making therapy and wellness tools accessible to all through innovative digital interventions.

Ask Techsoft Care Private Limited: Its flagship brand, Dr. SafeHands, is a digital health platform for sexual health and wellness, focused on preventive, promotive, diagnostic, therapeutic, and rehab services through an online counselling technology centre to provide immediate access, support, and care delivery across the value chain and genders.

Touchkin EServices Private Limited: Its solution Wysa, an AI-enabled coach for mental and emotional wellness, provides early intervention to high-risk groups through three methods—an AI chatbot, a library of evidence-based self-help tools, and messaging-based support from human therapists.

Menstrual Health Private Limited: Boondh is a social enterprise that works specifically on menstrual literacy, policy, programmes and interventions, monitoring and evaluation, advocacy, and art activism.

Davadost Pharma Private Limited: Dava Dost provides affordable drugs through offline-online pharmacies to help find the right generic drugs as per prescription from well-known brands at the right price.

Prev India Private Limited: Prev is a safe, convenient, and personalised app-based subscription service for birth control pills, with facilities like in-app medical consultation, prescription, and doorstep pill delivery.

Epsyclinic Healthcare Private Limited: Its flagship product, iWill, offers context-specific, multilingual mental health support to individuals and families with a strong focus on rural and urban healthcare.

KA Healthcare Private Limited: An omnichannel women's health lifecycle management platform designed to deliver personalised journey-based care covering all products and services-based needs of women.

Last Mile Care Private Limited: Its platform, 1Care, offers standardised and affordable primary phygital healthcare services to vulnerable populations at accessible delivery points.

“The Yash Entrepreneurs Program is an excellent example of the US government supporting locally led solutions in India, empowering young people to take a leadership role in their own health and that of their peers. The health interventions supported in this cohort will build on our efforts to positively impact sexual and reproductive health for the youth in India,” said USAID/India Health Office Director Michelle Lang-Alli. 

Srinivas Ramanujam, CEO, Villgro Innovations Foundation, added, “We believe this pool will greatly shape the market ecosystem for SRH/FP innovations built by these enterprises. The 18 innovations onboarded in this programme will also help us demonstrate leverage for the support provided by USAID’s MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership: India-Yash and enable us to build the Yash Collaborative Platform, which aims to raise $10 million to promote more innovations with a focus on women and young people’s health.”

In its first cohort in August 2022, the programme featured seven social enterprises—Padcare Labs, Green Delight Innovations, UVi Health, Pinky Promise, Get Intimacy, Stand We Speak, and That Mate—who have developed innovations and services in the menstrual hygiene, sexual and reproductive health, and mental health sectors.