Healthlane was meant to make hospitals obsolete. Now the startup is battling to stay in business
Summary
TechCabal spoke with over 10 past employees and obtained documents that revealed the celebrated founders behaviour and the true picture of things at the startup.In May 2021, when Sabina*, a product marketer, applied to work at Healthlane, a preventive healthcare startup based in Cameroon and Nigeria, that provides health check services, she was excited to join a budding innovative company.Her interview took place at the five-star Eko Hotels & Suites in Lagos, Nigeria, over lunch, and within the week she received her offer letter to start at Healthlane the following month.The startup, which was founded in 2019 by Alain Nteff and Agbor Ashu, offered a generous salary and mouth-watering perks for its employees. The mansion was fully furnished and had a pool and cinema room.The first sign of implosion for Sabina was when she noticed Nteff constantly changing his mind on decisions.She recalled him reaching out one evening by 6 PM to ask her to get two models (male and female), a photographer and lab coats for a photoshoot the next day. Then I just used to laugh and say, You people are doing money laundering in this company, because were talking about millions of naira being transferred.One of such invoices was sent out to the aforementioned entity, funded tech bros, for health checks, supplements and vaccination services. She would later find out that the money was a loan Mustapha had taken on behalf of the company.Earlier on, I had issues with Fade because he majorly bought things for the company and often failed to produce backing receipts to justify the amount he said he spent, Ngo said. We once bought an engine for Fades car, Ngo said.TechCabal reached out to Mustapha for comment but he declined.Healthlane closed 2021 with a Christmas party and its employees went home expecting to receive their salaries as usual, but they werent paid.