MEST Invests In Two Ghanaian Software Companies

Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), has invested in two new Ghanaian software companies, Claim Sync and Saya Mobile, following a two years training and mentoring in software entrepreneurship. A release issued to the Ghana News Agency on Sunday by Ms Amma Baffoe Communications Officer of MEST, said the Claim Sync provides an end-to-end system that enables healthcare service providers to easily compile medical claims electronically, which are later submitted to insurance companies for processing. The statement said the Claim Sync also sought to reduce the high administrative and labor costs, delays in reimbursements and data entry errors associated with manual processing of paper claims. It said the Saya Mobile offers a mobile group and individual chat application available to both feature and smart phone users, adding that Saya�s application available across the different mobile platforms. The statement said Saya, a thousand times cheaper than SMS, uses phone contacts as its medium of connection. MEST is a two year, fully sponsored training, in software development, business fundamentals and entrepreneurship, funded by the Meltwater Foundation. The statement said the entrepreneurial training programme was in three phases - MEST, Incubator and Mentoring. The MEST program provided rigorous entrepreneurial training, extensive hands-on project work and mastery of industry-proven methodologies for software development. The Incubator is to help MEST graduates to validate their business ideas and to get their ideas off the ground. The statement said enrollment into the incubator programme was based on an approved business plan and that participants would be awarded initial seed funding by Meltwater, in addition to an office space located in Accra, London and San Francisco. For the Mentoring aspect, each company would be offered a set of international mentors, who will serve as board members or company advisers, to optimize the chances for international commercial breakthrough. These companies will join six others currently in the MEST incubator program, to launch their products within the next few months. The statement noted that the companies would receive guidance and support from the incubator staff and mentors, which would be critical to taking their companies to the next level.