In a country where access to reliable, affordable medicines and women’s health services remains a major challenge, a young startup is leveraging AI, e-pharmacy, telehealth, and micro-financing to fill critical gaps. YeneHealth, founded by tech entrepreneur Kidist Tesfaye, is emerging as a leading femtech platform in Ethiopia, designed to unlock affordable healthcare, especially for women facing stigma, cost barriers, or geographic constraints.
What is YeneHealth?
Launched in 2022, YeneHealth is a web and mobile app that puts women’s sexual and reproductive healthcare at its center. Its features include period tracking, pregnancy monitoring, symptom and medicine tracking powered by AI, a women-focused e-pharmacy enabling discreet ordering and delivery of pharmaceutical and wellness products, telemedicine consultations with verified health professionals, and culturally responsive educational content in multiple languages.
Affordability, Access, and Innovation
One of YeneHealth’s distinguishing moves is combining healthcare with financial tools to address affordability. In mid-2024, the company partnered with VisionFund Microfinance to offer embedded healthcare financing through the app. Registered users can apply for micro-loans specifically for essential healthcare products and services, covering areas such as maternal health, menstrual hygiene, and water and sanitation. This aims to help women who might otherwise delay care because of cost.
Funding & Growth
YeneHealth has already attracted investor interest. In 2023 it secured pre-seed investment from The Case for Her, a Swedish women’s health investment fund. Shortly thereafter, Kenya-based Jaza Rift Ventures led another investment round. These funds are being used to expand reach, improve product development, and build partnerships.
Challenges YeneHealth Aims to Address
Many studies show that essential medicines in Ethiopia are often unaffordable for the lowest-paid workers, especially in rural areas, with frequent stock-outs and supply chain issues making the problem worse. YeneHealth’s model addresses these challenges by offering discreet delivery that reduces stigma, micro-loans that help overcome cost barriers, and multi-lingual content that makes health knowledge more accessible.
Impact & Potential
By combining technology with finance, YeneHealth is reducing friction for women in need of healthcare, particularly reproductive health. Its e-pharmacy helps reach those in remote areas or those reluctant to seek services in person, while its financing model could scale by making cost less of a barrier. However, challenges remain in regulatory compliance, managing logistics for last-mile delivery, verifying medicine quality, and ensuring the sustainability of financing schemes.
What’s Next
YeneHealth plans to expand its services across more regions in Ethiopia, and potentially throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Additional funding rounds are expected to support improvements in the platform, supply chain capacity, partnerships with health professionals, and expansion of loan-based financing.
