by Stephanie Baum
A $10 million micro fund that will make investments in early and growth stage mobile startups, including mobile health, got started this week. The founder of the 500 Mobile Collective fund,Edith Yeung, is a new investment partner with 500 Startups. She sees an opportunity to use mobile apps to supplement the healthcare infrastructure of developing countries such as India and China and across the African continent that account for 80 percent of mobile users or 3 billion people.
Among the partners involved are Greg Kidd, an early investor in Twitter and Square; Jay Sullivan, a former COO and interim CEO of Mozilla; Joe Wu, a co-founder and CEO of 91, an app store Baidu acquired last year for $1.9 billion; and Yongzhi Yang, the founder and CEO of Dolphin Browser — a customizable browsing app for Android and iOS network users. Yeung also used to work for Dolphin where she ran marketing and business development.
The fund will make 30-50 investments over the life of the fund, and 500 Startups main fund will occasionally co-invest in it, according to TechCrunch.
Dayima was the only mobile health app mentioned in the announcement.The menstrual cycle tracker raised $30 million earlier this year from a group of investors that included Sequoia Capital. As TechinAsia points out, it reflects a certain amount of speculation that women’s reproductive apps, particularly one as well-connected as Dayima, which has 45 million registered users and 3 million daily users, will provide a way to turn a profit.
In fact women’s health is a particularly interesting area for mobile health, such as the work by theMobile Alliance for Maternal Action. Its BabyCenter program transmits core and topic related text messages to improve health literacy for pregnant women in 70 countries . Another example is helping consumers to avoid counterfeit drugs, such as PharmaSecure.
The Ebola Virus epidemic in West Africa has highlighted the need for portable diagnostic devices, frequently enabled by a smartphone, and using social media to track the spread of the virus.
