SOSO CARE

The difficulty to seek medical attention and the collection of recyclable waste are two daily problems that face the Nigerian population and more broadly people in other African countries.

Because of pervasive poverty and poor healthcare financing (less than 3% of Nigeria’s 200 million population have health insurance), maternal mortality is high (55,000 Women die each year Source: WHO) among women who cannot afford out of pocket health care.  At the same time, Nigeria generates over 34 million tons of waste yearly, including 20 billion PET bottles of which less than 10% is collected, sorted and recycled due to poor logistics and awareness which causes poor sanitation, public health problems and causes damage to the environment and oceans.

To validate our model, we used secondary data from World bank research, UNICEF, UN Habitat and WHO. We piloted our approach – generating revenue from users using recyclables to redeem the cost of policy premiums over a 6-week period and 92 people donated their waste to redeem cover. A key learning from our pilot was that efficiency and convenience in the waste collection process is critical for success as users will never walk long distances to recycle their waste. We learned that we needed to raise awareness around our products (converting waste to cash and affordable micro-insurance) through in-person and social media campaigns to increase conversion.

SOSO CARE is a micro mobile insurtech company aiming to provide health insurance to the underprivileged by using recyclables as insurance premium.

Our model is subscription based through partnership with insurance underwriters to provide us low cost insurance.

We partner with  AXA and American insurance as our insurance underwriters, and we distribute micro-health insurance policies to underserved markets, particularly women in hard to reach markets in Kaduna, River States, and Abia state.  SoSo Care is paid a brokerage fee to distribute policy. To pay for the insurance cover, the user donates or sells recyclables including bottles, glass, plastics equivalent to the premium.  SoSo Care collects and crushes waste for sale to partner offtakers who sell the collected waste to big recycling companies as raw materials.

Our solution is designed to enable over 100 million Nigerians in the informal sector to finance their insurance premium using trash as premium.  

By linking recyclables to healthcare, we use one stone to kill 2 birds which includes access to quality healthcare to reduce self-medication as well as infant and maternal mortality. Also we are solving environmental problem by promoting sanitation and public health. Finally we are creating jobs for our agents who distributes insurance while also fighting poverty by reducing unplanned medical expenses leading to out of pocket health financing

we have a team of  13 people with diverse knowledge on sustainability, recycling, management, sales, technology and finance who are committed to drive the service to millions of people. 

At SOSO CARE we have been growing on over 10X month on Month on our insurance sales and total recycables recovered. we have built a few things around environmental sustainability, healthcare access and financial inclusion. 

Firstly, we are the first and the only sustainable medical insurance which accepts recycable trash as insurance premium in over 1000 hospitals across cities in Nigeria. 

secondly, in the past three years, we have accepted recycables as medical insurance premium for 11,500 people.

Thirdly, we have created 346 direct jobs and unlocked $150,000 as income for mostly women who accept trash as insurance premium in return for commission across different communities. 

Lastly, we have recovered and recycled 760,000 kg from plastics from the environment. 

By joining Solve, I hope to connect and network with people and mostly gain more insight on how to scale our work to more communities and cities 

Currently we are the only insurance that accepts trash as insurance premium. By linking recycling to healthcare we aim to use one stone to kill 2 birds. The solution solves the problem of health insurance premium as well as encourage recycling.  

Health is central to community well-being as well as to personal and national welfare. Research shows that health has a strong influence on people’s earning capacity and productivity. It affects educational performance and thus determines employment prospects. Soso Care was created with the ambition of achieving access to healthcare for everyone, irrespective of social  economic status. 

Through our waste-for-health service, Soso Care aims at producing 3 main outcomes: People from underserved communities: 

• Benefit from an alternative way of financing their healthcare by using recyclable wastes as a medium to finance their healthcare cover

• Adhere to habits that enable them to sustain good health conditions such as regular medical check-up visits or avoiding self-medication

• Live in cleaner and safer conditions as more wastes are being collected from their environment which improves sanitary conditions 

our impact goals includes the following measurements:

1. Total income created and unlocked for agents who collect trash as insurance premium in community; of which % is women 

2. Total tonnes of recycables recovered from the environment 

3. Total income generated 

4. Total number of people who have recieved our medical insurance using their trash as premium 

5. Total amount of CO2 emission removed from the environment

we leverage on our array of technology tools including oue webapp, USSD and mobile App to drive recycling collection process as a way to finance medical insurance in a seamless way.  

we have 13 full time staffs and 6 part time staffs 

we have been working on soso care for 3 years 

we have a diverse team with 85% of the team as women. we encourage inclusion, support diversity and openness to work and fair treatment 

we use a subscription and sales model. 

• First, we have partnered with insurance companies to underwrite and design a  low cost insurance product using technology

• People are able to pay for the premium with Cash or in most cases with recyclable plastic waste from simple technology process.

• We collect these waste to provide them health insurance. This results in improved healthcare access for this group while simultaneously improving the environment. 

Given the development challenges we are contributing to solve and the potential of our total addressable market, our social innovation is particularly attractive for impact investors. We aim at leveraging this Insight, network, referrals and grant opportunity to refine the most cost efficient operation model to scale while populating our social, environmental and economic track record, in the view of building the most compelling impact investment case to scale in other developing countries with urgent need for health and waste management intervention.