Emilian Popa

Emilian Popa is the Founder and CEO of Ilara Health, a Nairobi-based point-of-care diagnostics and clinic-financing company he launched in 2019. The business equips Africa's small private clinics with diagnostic devices, pharmaceutical products, practice-management software and working-capital financing, with a mission to bring affordable diagnostics to the roughly 500 million Africans who struggle to access basic medical tests. He describes himself as passionate about disease prevention and early detection, and as an avid "biohacker."

Before founding Ilara, Popa spent more than a decade launching, scaling and exiting 20+ technology ventures across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Russia. He led Groupon South Africa, ran Rocket Internet ventures including Jumia Nigeria and Zando South Africa, and headed the Africa Internet Accelerator (AIA), which was exited to Naspers. Earlier in his career he spent roughly seven years in management consulting in Europe, the US and Africa.

On the investing side, Popa spent four years building and growing DiGAME Investment, an Africa-focused tech growth VC, where he backed companies such as GetSmarter (ed-tech, successfully exited) and Swvl (Egyptian mass-transit mobility). Alongside his fund work he has made a series of personal angel investments. He holds a joint MBA from Columbia Business School and London Business School.

• Invests in people and business models he understands operationally — in his words, models he knows "either from my past ventures, or from the investments I've made and where I can bring value to the founders at various levels: process, strategy, governance, recruitment, fundraising."
• Focuses angel capital on areas he can add operating value: payments, lending, distribution, merchant payments, insurtech, mobility/transportation, and mobile commerce.
• Geographic priority on Africa's largest tech markets — South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco — with stated interest in expanding into West Francophone Africa.
• Prefers strong founding teams paired with models offering clear value-add beyond capital; his own venture (Ilara Health) blends payments, lending, data and rural distribution, reflecting the categories he gravitates toward.