A final year medicine student at the University of Nairobi is the winner of the June NODO Pitch Competition edition at the NODO Web Connect event held in partnership with Power Learn Project (PLP) in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on June 21.

Lucy Njeri Maina, who will be graduating later this year with a Bachelor’s in Medicine and Surgery, received a $1000 cash reward from NODO after her startup, ZenMom, which promises to transform maternity services for mothers, was voted the best by judges.

“I’m very grateful. It is something that I was looking forward to,” she told NODO News. “It gives me hope that I can now start the journey of a startup.”

Maina, who started conceptualizing the idea of a maternal health telemedicine app to help thousands of mothers out of maternal challenges in January this year, said she will spend the money for market research, prototyping and product design. “It’s not always only about having a product but also understanding customer needs and preferences. We will also conduct technical feasibility studies and work with blockchain experts because our tokenization infrastructure is complex,” Maina said.

*(Maina pitches her telemedicine decentralized startup at the event at Workstyle, 1 Avenue, in Nairobi on June 21. PHOTO/ Faustine Ngila)*

She expects to complete building her minimum viable product (MVP) in the next two months, and do the initial launch by October. The ZenMom app, according to Maina, will allow about 240,000 Kenyan mothers redeem crypto tokens to cater for maternal care, while maintaining an active decentralized health monitoring system.

She advises young women in tech to brush off stereotypes around women excelling in technologies seen as complex like blockchain. “The number of women in tech is rising. Your gender should never stop you from pursuing a career in tech.”

Two other innovators in Web3 made it to the final round: Moses Ochieng, whose carbon credit and NFT marketplace startup Carbon Zero plans to facilitate payments to interns working in climate adaptation organizations, and Benaiah Wepundi, whose housing startup Easy House targets to be the go-to platform for college students looking for houses to rent.

(Left to right: Founder of Carbon Zero Moses Ochieng, PLP chief of growth and operations Mumbi Ndung’u, ZenMom founder Lucy Maina, founder of Easy House Benaiah Wepundi, and NODO’s executive assistant Masatomo Kame. PHOTO/ Faustine Ngila)