Lucy Setian and Pearce Mutendera, both members of Kellogg College and Cohort 3 of the MSc in Global Healthcare Leadership (MGHL) programme, are co-founders of Synergya, a Switzerland-based platform that supports startups and scaleups across Europe, Africa and the Middle East through a ‘zero-fees, zero-equity' joint venture model.
Launched in April 2026 after seven months of development, Synergya uses a proprietary AI engine to identify complementary ventures, help them form and execute joint ventures (JVs) – startup-with-startup partnerships that accelerate marketing, go-to-market strategy and investment readiness. The platform also provides access to pro bono senior advisors, curated scaling services and connections to corporate, philanthropic and investment networks.
Building on experience in global health innovation
Lucy Setian is a recipient of the Oxford Scholarship for Women in Leadership to support her studies on the MGHL programme. She developed the idea for Synergya following years of experience designing and scaling international health programmes and ventures across Europe, Africa and Latin America. Before founding Synergya, she led HealthTech Hub Africa, which was recognised in 2023 by the US Department of State and Concordia with the P3 Impact Award for the world’s best public-private partnership.
The idea for Synergya grew out of a challenge she repeatedly encountered while building partnerships in global health innovation: although many ventures had strong ideas, technologies and funding, identifying the right strategic partner and resources for sustainable scale remained slow and difficult.
A key proof point came through a partnership she helped structure between Rwandan digital health company Lifesten Health and Canadian health AI company NuraLogix. The collaboration deployed transdermal optical imaging technology for cardiovascular screening in Rwanda and reached approximately 1.6 million people nationwide with support from the Rwanda Ministry of Health. However, identifying the right match required extensive manual screening and due diligence across more than 200 companies. Synergya.io aims to make this process faster – matching through their platform takes less than a minute instead of months of manual review.
From classroom conversation to co-founding a company
Setian later shared the concept for Synergya with fellow MGHL student Pearce Mutendera, during a conversation on the way to Kellogg College – a moment that would ultimately lead to the company’s creation. Mutendera, who joined as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, helped shape the technical and platform infrastructure that would become the basis of the company.
The founding team also includes Dr Theresa Reiker as Chief Operating Officer and Dr Aleksandar Petrovic as Chief Business Officer, fellow Oxonians with an industry track-record.
Since being founded in October 2025, Synergya received over 300 applications, from which successfully onboarded around 78 startups and scaleups, recruited nearly 30 pro bono senior advisors and secured a growing network of over 10 institutional and ecosystem partners.
The organisation launched the first release of its platform on 1 April and established an ‘Observer Circle’ of senior leaders from the global health, sustainability and investment sectors. Synergya continues to welcome applications from scale-oriented health and sustainability founders globally.
International recognition and future ambitions
In a further milestone, Synergya has been selected to participate in the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (WHO/Europe) Public Health Innovation Platform as part of the thematic working group on Policy, Governance and Financing and was nominated by the International Telecommunications Union for a WSIS regional cooperation award.
Synergya’s mid-term ambition is to catalyse more than 100 joint ventures addressing seven major global health and sustainability challenges over the next five years.
The MSc in Global Healthcare Leadership programme brings together professionals from across healthcare, policy, business and technology to develop leadership approaches for complex global health systems. For Setian and Mutendera, the programme not only provided academic and professional development, but also created the environment in which a shared idea became a new venture with global ambitions.
Their story reflects the programme’s emphasis on interdisciplinary leadership, entrepreneurship and cross-sector collaboration to address major health challenges worldwide.