About the Pears Challenge
The Pears Challenge is a venture builder enabling experienced Israeli entrepreneurs to create successful impact tech ventures that meet critical needs in developing countries.
Graduating ventures have developed technologies that are impacting thousands of people worldwide and have raised over 21 million dollars in seed financing and contracts since the program launched in 2014.
20
ALUMNI STARTUPS OF THE PEARS CHALLENGE
$23 M
RAISED IN GRANTS, CONTRACTS, & FUNDING
30
COUNTRIES WHERE ALUMNI ARE OPERATING
Meet the Pears Challenge Alumni!
Enhanced Impact with Data-Driven Insights
Pears Challenge IV (2019)
Rural Senses combines AI innovation with authentic community voices to MEASURE, MANAGE, and CELEBRATE impact, simply.The company utilizes networks of local data collectors, advanced AI technology, and a robust methodology developed at the University of Cambridge. It partners with leading international non-profits that work with vulnerable communities. Rural Senses reduces the hassle associated with high-quality impact management, ensuring strategies reflect the genuine experiences of people.
Med-tech for Everybody
Pears Challenge III (2017)
EFA Technologies has developed RevDx, an affordable handheld blood test diagnostic tool. The RevDx is a mobile end-point solution for performing automatic microscopy tests, including whole blood sampling and an automatic diagnosis of blood count. The product is easy to operate and uses a blood sample from finger prick without the need for laboratory conditions or specific preparations, enabling users to make real-time informed decisions. The RevDx is a disease-mapping solution for integrated community case management. The real-time, multichannel platform is a programmable portable lab that aims to automatically diagnose infectious diseases, starting with parasitology and blood cell count, in order to enable safe, precise, and affordable testing, treating, and tracking.
Intelligent Hand Hygiene System
Pears Challenge III (2017)
Soapy Care is the developer of the CleanMachine Pro, a personal hand-hygiene station powered by computer vision, machine learning algorithms, and the internet of things. CleanMachine Pro can identify individual users for personal compliance or a personalized user experience and uses visual content to educate users and promote hand hygiene best practices. In addition to measuring and monitoring hand cleaning cycles for hand hygiene quality and compliance, CleanMachine Pro can monitor users’ body temperature and control the water volume and temperature as well as the amount of soap or sanitizer being dispensed. Its reporting tools can provide valuable data on hand hygiene cycles, spot trends, offer insights for improvement, and more.
Cooling technology for In-Field Post-Harvest Applications
Pears Challenge V (2022)
NOF – Natural Offset Farming has developed advanced cooling technology and heavily focuses on the field of CO2 utilization and decarbonization. The company-patented technology utilizes liquid CO2, and provides a ‘cooling-as-service’ value model for the farmer. NOF is currently focusing on Post Harvest solutions, tackling the $1trillion market opportunity by providing in-field pre-cooling treatment, starting the cold-chain in the field.
Transforming Natural Capital into Financial Value
Pears Challenge V (2022)
AMMFI stands for Alternative Market Mechanism and Financial Inclusion. It is a Carbon FinTech platform uniquely designed to facilitate the agri-food industry's alignment with carbon offsetting and climate control regulations and practices. AMMFI offers financial mechanisms that generate incentives to protect nature and turn natural capital into financial values.
Novel Bio-pesticides from Indigenous Plants
Pears Challenge V (2022)
Better Leaf creates novel bio pesticides from the African flora - making a beneficial impact on the environment and local economic development. Better Leaf aims to combine Israeli research and development with on-the-ground knowledge to create novel biopesticides from Ghanaian medicinal plants. Biopesticides have many advantages over 'traditional' pesticides - they are less energy-intensive to produce, less harmful to the environment when used, and with beneficial unit costs to the farmer. They can also increase yields and lead to greater food security
Hydroponics: This is how you grow today
Pears Challenge II (2015)
LivinGreen advances Hydroponics and Aquaponics globally, including in Israel, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. For the private sector, LivinGreen manufactures and markets equipment for home growers, facilitating widespread access to Hydroponics and Aquaponics. Since 2009, they have conducted workshops to educate the public and foster a growing community of private growers, particularly through their active Hydroponics & Aquaponics forum on Facebook. They have also partnered with international organizations like the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to design and create food systems for private homes in developing countries. They also work in the commercial sector to construct large-scale Aquaponics and Hydroponics farms to produce food in both agricultural and urban settings. Finally, they also work in the social-educational sector aiming to introduce advanced ecological and agricultural systems into schools, with the understanding that these systems are an excellent tool for educating future generations to a clean and sustainable environment. The company has established systems in more than 250 schools and social centers in Israel.
Innovative Splints and Casts
Pears Challenge III (2017)
Cassit designs and produces splints and casts for orthopedics, rehabilitation, and emergency care. The company's products are simple, smart, and of premium quality. Each product embodies user-centered design and reusable and recyclable design approaches. Cassit is an R&D company with over 40 medical devices for limb fixation. The products can be customized according to individual limb anatomy, to provide excellent orthopedic support and recovery without embarrassment.
Healthcare Infrastructure and Behavioral Expertise
Pears Challenge III (2017)
Keheala is a mobile health company that aims to improve healthcare access and treatment outcomes for patients. By empowering patients with information, motivation, and support, Keheala delivers tools to overcome the non-medical drivers of disease that exist away from health facilities. Healthcare agencies are provided with remote-monitoring capabilities and vital analytics to combat epidemics in resource-constrained environments. Keheala is a social enterprise committed to reinvesting a majority of gross revenue in order to achieve sustainability, scale its impact, and address some of the world's greatest challenges with innovative behavior change interventions.
WasteNot Sanitation System
Pears Challenge IV (2019)
Fabriloo specializes in advanced sanitation systems, employing innovative mixed matrix composite filtrating membranes to treat waste on-site. Their technology disinfects 99.9% of pathogens, removes urea and ammonium from liquids, and reduces waste mass by a factor of 10. It's designed to be safe, off-grid, waterless, cost-effective, and scalable, turning waste into valuable natural fertilizers. This makes it suitable for areas without infrastructure, including disaster response situations, parks, urban slums, and locations used by the government or military.
Graduating ventures who are no longer active
Since 2014, we've taken the ambitious mission of being the only venture builder in Israel focused on international development challenges.The Pears Challenge is continuously growing and improving to guide entrepreneurs to make the most impact through their ventures, with each cohort designed to focus on a different region and sector.
Pears Challenge III 2017
Affordable Healthcare in India
Pears Challenge II 2015
Smallholder Farmer Value Chains in Kenya
Pears Challenge I 2014
Accelerating Development Technology Startups
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