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Franck TIAMBO : « KimboCare brings a whole new way of powering healthcare access”

Active in the mainstream healthcare credit market, EPFL-based start-up KimboCare brings transparency to the delivery of quality medical services. Initially focused on an individual market, KimboCare is now strengthening its commitment to small and medium-sized businesses, large organizations and other entities, in order to increase its impact. KimboCare CEO Franck TIAMBO is at the helm of this exciting initiative. With a clear vision and unwavering determination, he is guiding the company towards new horizons, while remaining true to KimboCare’s fundamental mission: to transform the healthcare sector through transparency and innovation.

Monde Economique: Initially focused on private individuals, KimboCare has recently reoriented its strategy to target businesses as well. What motivated this strategic shift?

Franck TIAMBO: It’s more of a strategic evolution than a fundamental change. We realized that the goal to fund healthcare for the financially vulnerable extends beyond individuals. On one hand, the diaspora seeks to fund quality care for their loved ones with peace of mind. On the other hand, organizations with ESG commitments or SDG mandates want to make a broader impact.

These organizations require assurance that their funding truly empowers the targeted communities in the developing world, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa, with accessible and reliable healthcare. Transparency is crucial to ensure the money is used for healthcare services, and they also desire visibility into the achieved outcomes. Additionally, many are now required to report outcomes under CSRD regulation and other ESG frameworks.

For organizations seeking careful spending while making a meaningful impact, KimboCare is the obvious choice. It offers transparency in impact fund usage, delivery of care, and monitoring of predetermined impact metrics.

Monde Economique Has KimboCare’s experience in the consumer market influenced your focus on the corporate market? Justify your answer.

Franck TIAMBO: Over the past three years, KimboCare has been helping individuals sponsor healthcare access for their families back home, leading to significant platform growth and learning. This is a very promising segment for us, and we feel privileged to empower those families to somehow in their own organic way achieve their internal SDGs, starting with access to good health and wellbeing.

However, we recognized a crucial gap in healthcare access for those without assistance from relatives in wealthier countries or other individual supporters. We questioned why they should be left behind. As we engaged with ESG leaders, foundation directors, and wealth managers, we realized that funding wasn’t the primary issue. There is sufficient capital to bridge the gap in accessing quality care. The challenge lies in creating a coherent and holistic framework for deploying impact that matters. Which medical interventions to fund? How to ensure interventions truly empower people to lead better lives? How to measure the actual impact and effectiveness of the funding? Additionally, finding reliable and knowledgeable partners on the ground that have the right connections and specific barriers can be a daunting task.

These complexities have deterred many decision-makers from directing funding towards Africa, despite the desire to make a difference. Today, our field ecosystems in Africa are stronger than ever, enriched by our deep understanding of local norms and by insights gathered from previous outcomes-based health programs and individually sponsored care visits. We’re also partnering with a more diverse set of healthcare providers to offer impact leaders greater choices not only in geography and demographics, but also in medical interventions.

Monde Economique: How do KimboCare’s services contribute to companies’ sustainability objectives?

Franck TIAMBO: KimboCare’s platform contributes to organizations’ sustainability commitments in numerous ways. For starters, it provides a framework and delivery ecosystem that enable them to advance global health initiatives of their choice but also to contribute over time to sustainably improving healthcare standards in the regions such as Africa where access to quality care is still very limited today. It really becomes about democratizing access to good care from both elevating standards on the supply side and increasing trust and adoption on the demand side.

Next is the transparency factor, which we often refer to as traceability. Organizations are increasingly under pressure from consumers, investors and even regulators now to substantiate their sustainability claims. Our approach is heavily data-driven, continuously harnessing insights from the platform to inform implementation strategies and pathways to achieve desired outcomes. Our technology platform enables organizations to measure and report without much requirement for additional resources on their part, which is vital for ESG and social impact leaders, including CFOs who may be accountable for reporting metrics that are not only accurate but verifiable.

Another interesting aspect of our platform, which I won’t go into much detail, is that it gives organizations the optionality to involve their employees in driving accessible healthcare either for their loved ones or as a way to find purpose in the workplace.

Monde Economique: Supported by the Life and Health sustainability initiative, the Swiss Re Foundation is collaborating with KimboCare to strengthen its commitment to advancing access to healthcare in developing regions. What does this partnership involve?

Franck TIAMBO: Swiss Re Foundation has been engaging with a variety of select partners to strengthen societal resilience in developing regions and advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, in particular climate action and good health. What’s also very interesting with the foundation, is that they have been very vocal about adopting evidence-based approaches to realizing impact for it allows them to track the results of the projects they fund and to generate insight to inform future strategy for impact – what to do more, where to do it, whom to target, etc.

It is with those principles in mind that we came together to advance access to good care in Africa. This particular endeavor aims to offer financially vulnerable pregnant women around Nairobi, Kenya, access to high quality prenatal, postnatal and neonatal care. With this work, we get to participate in the reduction of maternal morbidity but also to give babies elevated chances to survive their first year and hopefully celebrate their 5^th birthday. How beautiful and empowering is that?

The collaboration is also about continuous learning and improvement to get impact right. Nothing is set in stone, but our framework and established ecosystem provide structure to effectively channel insights from the patient’s journey and care delivered, allowing us to evolve interventions and drive successful outcomes.

Monde Economique: One of the major challenges faced by some companies and organizations is transparency in the use of allocated funds. How does KimboCare address concerns about transparency in healthcare delivery in Africa?

Franck TIAMBO: With regulation heightening, organizations are looking for transparency around the usage of impact funds but also accountability for reported outcomes, and that’s what our platform delivers, in a nutshell. Breaking it down I can talk about three key components of our platform.

First off, we work with a network of reputable and reliable healthcare providers that we hand pick and verify, ensuring their credentials, licenses, and patient satisfaction track records meet our standards.

Second, we onboard the vetted providers onto our tech platform, enabling KimboCare to trace the medical services delivered. This traceability feature helps ensure proper utilization of allocated funds and cost-effective care is delivered to the intended beneficiaries.

Last, we have monitoring & reporting. Our platform includes real-time monitoring and reporting features, allowing organizational leaders to track funded initiatives’ progress and observe from the comfort of their tablet the impact their individual contribution gets to create.

Monde Economique: How do you see KimboCare developing over the next few years?

Franck TIAMBO: About half of the world still lacks access to essential health services, and traditional approaches to funding have often lacked transparency and accountability. We believe there is tremendous room to innovate not only to achieve better health outcomes but also to empower communities to thrive in all aspects of life. KimboCare brings a whole new way of powering healthcare access, and we want to see the venture further establish presence in Africa which bears 25% of global disease burden, and gradually expand to other regions facing comparable healthcare challenges. Additionally, we want to offer organizations opportunities to fund beyond the usual suspects (e.g., maternal health or neonatal) and tackle the lesser talked-about health issues that cause tremendous distress on the continent. Needless to say, to achieve these ambitious plans, we will continue to seek strategic partnerships and collaborations with other tech platforms, governments, local community-based organizations, and enterprises to increase reach and strengthen impact.

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