Solving an Impossible Choice for African Mothers
Sahar is the Founder of Maziwa, which supports East African mothers who face the impossible choice between breastfeeding their newborns and working postpartum. Sahar’s Tanzanian and Indian heritage inspired her to spend the last decade focused on maternal and newborn health in these regions, through organizations like Jacaranda Health, Johnson & Johnson, and the Aga Khan Development Network. Sahar is from Vancouver, Canada, and has BCOM and BA from Queen's University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.
Sho Links:
https://maziwabreastfeeding.com/
Imperfect Show Notes
While these notes are not perfect (AI translation is still improving), they give you the gist of the conversation. Enjoy!
My conversation with Sahar:
Morgan Bailey 0:02
Hello and welcome to the profit meets impact Podcast where we explore the intersection of doing well and doing good in the world. I'm your host Morgan Bailey and I'm excited to bring you the wisdom of entrepreneurs and thought leaders that are using business to create sustainable and meaningful change across the globe. excited to bring you this next conversation with Sahar Sahar is the founder of Mozilla, a company which supports East African mothers who face the impossible choice between breastfeeding their newborns and working postpartum. So Harz, Tanzania and Indian heritage inspired her to spend last decade focused on maternal and newborn health in these regions through organizations like Jacaranda health, Johnson Johnson and the Aga Khan Development Network. Sahar is from Vancouver, Canada, and has degrees from Queen's University and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Sahar. I've been looking forward to this conversation. I know, we've had several conversations so far and excited to bring this one to our listeners.
Sahar Jamal 1:06
Thank you so much, Morgan. Excited to be here.
Morgan Bailey 1:10
All right. So you do a lot of work with breastfeeding in East Africa.
And we know just generally breastfeeding is is is something that is an important topic, obviously for newborn health. But talk to us a little bit particularly within East Africa. Why is this such an important issue? Why is it such a trade off?
Sahar Jamal 1:32
Yeah, absolutely. So as you mentioned, what we try and focus on is this impossible choice or impossible trade off that others are making. When a new mom has a baby, you know, she feels that might be her responsibility to nourish and raise that child. And when she's working, that often takes a toll on her ability to do that. Those of us in global health might be aware that breastfeeding has huge implications for newborn health babies who are not breastfed are actually 14 times more likely to die than those who are. And both mothers and children who don't go through the process of breastfeeding are at a greater risk for serious illnesses such as maternal ovarian cancer, breast cancer for the mom, babies can face pneumonia, stunting, diarrhea, all kinds of challenges.
And while in some countries in the world, there are alternatives that are suitable and better safe, and mums choose to opt for those. And that's perfectly fine in markets across Africa. These alternatives are extremely expensive. As a result, they're often overly diluted, they're often mixed with unsafe water. And as a result, the risk of infant mortality and these serious illnesses is extra exponentially higher.
Additionally, in market,
and are working informally, for the most part, so they might be working as a cleaner or a nanny.
They don't necessarily have any kind of breastfeeding support through their employer or through their workplace. They're often commuting several hours a day. And unlike maybe North America or Europe, there may not be options for breast pumps that are effective within these workplaces. So this trade off is incredibly real. In fact, in Kenya, 90% of moms are either choosing to stay home to breastfeed or returning to work to support their families financially. As I mentioned, the health risks for this choice are extremely high. But on the other hand, if a mother decides to stay home to focus on breastfeeding, she's often giving up several months of income in the short term, and in the long term, maybe even dropping out of the workforce completely, which has an intense impact on her financial independence, her own empowerment, and her family and community's economic standing, as well.
Morgan Bailey 3:57
So I'm so I'm hearing really two key themes coming out of this one is obviously the health aspect for for newborns.
And maybe the the lack of access to safe alternatives to to breast milk and add on a bigger and bigger not a bigger level. But on equal level. It's as also this this economic aspect of the fact that women have to make a choice between breastfeeding or being in the workforce. So I'm really curious, how did you identify how did you see this challenge? How did you say, Hey, I'm the person who's going to do something about this, both given your expertise, and like what gave you the confidence to go there?
Sahar Jamal 4:41
It's a great question. It's really funny because over the last four to five years, I've become somewhat of a breastfeeding expert almost by accident. And I'm not sure whether it either prepares me for motherhood or terrifies me. And so it's an interesting position to be in at this point in my life, but where it all started, actually
as well, I was working at Johnson and Johnson, I was working there in the UK as a brand manager and totally different brands. But I was given the opportunity to become their CSR lead for the Northern European business. And I learned a lot more about their work in maternal health and Africa and Asia. And as you mentioned, my parents are Indian intensity. And so I've always been passionate about what will help them women's health in these regions. And as I got more and more involved with this voluntary role, I decided that I liked it more than my day job. So as a result, I quit my job, I decided to go back to school and eventually I ended up moving to Kenya to work in an organization called Jacaranda health. Now during this time, I learned a lot more about maternal and newborn health, but specifically got involved with a breastfeeding related project. And my task during this time, was to interview hundreds of mothers about their breastfeeding experience. And because of all the health benefits of breastfeeding to encourage them to exclusively breastfeed for the first six months. And this was a very eye opening experience. First of all, I'm sitting there as someone who is not a mother and non Kenyan trying to give advice about breastfeeding to moms who have gone through this before who have done this, and you know very well what they should be doing with their child. And I learned very quickly that most mothers don't have the tools or support that's required in office, in many cases to continue breastfeeding exclusively for six months. As I mentioned, many of them work informally. They're commuting several hours a day. And
they often also don't have the lactation support that many mothers in developed markets would have, such as lactation consultants that can help them with breastfeeding skills, attachment, watching positioning, people normally assume that mothers know exactly what to do when they have a child. And often breastfeeding was actually a learned skill and not, you know, natural skill that develops as you have as you have a child. So this was really eye opening for me. And one particular story, if you'll allow me to share it is a mother named Isabel, who is a construction site worker. So literally, like the most extreme environment where she's working at different work sites, every couple of weeks, not only does she not have a lactation room, she doesn't have an outhouse, even that she can use to express breast milk. And of course, many of her colleagues are male, and really don't understand what the issue is, in terms of why she needs to take time away to express milk for her baby. And for her first child. She wasn't able to breastfeed. And when I was talking to her about it, she sort of just kind of laughed when I was asking her why, and explained her situation. And I guess later in the journey, she actually participated as one of our early prototype testers and was able to use our first prototype to feed her second child exclusively with breast milk throughout the entire journey. So
you know, these initial conversations that I had a Jacaranda were really the inspiration for this organization.
Morgan Bailey 8:04
Now, your organization is Is it a? Is it a blend of nonprofit and for profit? Is it a purely for profit? How's that set up? How do you make the decision like about like how to why to turn this into a business as opposed to philanthropy?
Sahar Jamal 8:19
Yeah, that's a great question. It is both. So it's what we call a hybrid, which has a nonprofit and for profit, part of our work is renting and selling what's called the WeMo breast pump. As I mentioned, Isabel had used this product in her workplace. It's a discrete wireless and portable pump that can be used by women who are working in all kinds of work environments. And the sale and rental of this falls within our for profit because it can be financially viable as a business. The other thing we do is tackle the second challenge, which is the lactation support that women are really lacking. This lactation consultant type of role, we recruit and train a network of lactation, or sorry, breastfeeding ambassadors in the community that dispel cultural myths that provide practical training, and work with mums directly on breastfeeding skills us to get them started in their journey. And now this work is
harder to monetize and falls within our nonprofit arm. And so that is primarily grant funded. In terms of making the decision. It wasn't an easy one. You know, social enterprises are an important component of driving social change. And I believe, if you can drive impact and profitability at the same time, it makes it easier for you to be a scalable and sustainable organization. At the same time, operating in markets like Kenya or even across Africa where there is such a strong presence of NGOs and those that are subsidizing or providing free services. Things like education and training are really difficult to do in a financially viable way because the market is a little bit
skewed. And so having this combined approach of a sustainable for profit and a grant funded nonprofit really allows us to achieve both of our goals, which is providing both the tools and the services required for working moms to keep breastfeeding.
Morgan Bailey 10:15
That makes a lot of sense. And having spent a lot of time needed to East Africa and understand that market, I totally, totally understand how you'd want to go that hybrid approach, particularly for the training aspect of it, because there's so much training that goes on.
You know, one thing I'm curious about is, you know, there's what what was the, when you go from like this idea of like, are seen this problem? How did you want identify that we need a breast pump? And then how did you figure it out? How did you go through getting it manufactured, develop those partnerships? Because I'm first sure from some our listeners, like going from one idea to having a product in hand,
that feels like a big leap? Walk us through that?
Sahar Jamal 10:54
Sure, absolutely. I think that it all kind of happened one setup at a time. And when I look back, it does feel like you know, a lot of milestones that we went through. But my advice for any innovator and entrepreneur or budding entrepreneur is to just start,
number one, just start and number two, spend a lot of time in the communities that you're hoping to serve, we're going to ensure you know, after working in these environments for a long time, if you bring a solution to a community that they haven't helped create, or that they're not familiar with, it's difficult or impossible to drive adoption. And so one thing that we tried to focus on,
was really spending time with moms and trying to figure out what they really need. And so we didn't even start with the idea of a breast pump, it was, you know, could have been pods that were available for women to go and express milk. And it could have been Employer Support working with companies, there was a whole host of potential solutions that we were considering. But we worked with about 800 Kenyan moms and CO creating the solution and recognize that even though public policies were mandating lactation rooms at employers, even though those formal employers that were
existing in Kenya did have lactation rooms, or who are trying to provide some support, again, because most women weren't working in formally, it was really difficult to reach that informal market unless you put the power into the moms hands with something that she could use on her own terms, and fit into her routine. So I guess that answers the first part of the question, which is, how did we come to a breast pump.
In terms of the journey to manufacturing in developing it,
we created a prototype we had mothers tested, there was several iterations of that I worked with the technical team based in Chicago.
And one step at a time we created this, and, frankly, breast pumps are not rocket science, something that, you know, is pretty obvious about women's health technology is that it's super uninvested. And a lot of things that should have been invented a long time ago haven't been. And so it was really just a problem that needed solving and working with the technical team, we were able to source and manufacture breast pump with our manufacturer in China, and work towards getting it approved through regulatory and imported into, into Kenya.
So maybe easier said than done. But at the same time, you might be surprised that some of these things are
possible and doable. If you start putting the effort and energy behind it, I would say I do have to thank Northwestern University for a lot of their monetary support and the resources and capacity that they provided throughout this journey. And it was a way that I was able to connect with engineers and technical people that helped me because I certainly am not an engineer, myself.
Morgan Bailey 13:46
Awesome. Well, a couple of things I'm hearing, they're kind of important to call out. One is this idea of the sort of iterative, like, just just take steps.
You know, and it doesn't it doesn't all happen overnight. You know, you know, there's you know, that thing of like the 10 year overnight success sort of thing like it takes it takes time. The other thing I'm hearing is it's really listen to customers and understand the problem.
There's the quote, I really liked by a guy named Thomas Kettering that said a problem well stated as half solved, right? So you've talked over 800 women to really understand what was happening before you were like, Yeah, this is what they need sort of thing. So just want to call that out. Those are two really important aspects for Social Entrepreneurs, I would say for entrepreneurs in general.
One thing that I'm curious about because I know I know some people who are starting a business, one of the most daunting thing is like saying, Well, who do I reach out to so who do Who do I connect with? Like, who's making breast pumps? Like what was your process a little bit about like, you know, identifying, like, who to partner with.
Unknown Speaker 14:59
Mm.
Sahar Jamal 15:01
Yeah, that's a really great question. I again, spending time in the market makes a huge difference. When I started putting myself out there going to conferences, I ended up encountering someone who worked with the Kenya association for breastfeeding. She's now our community engagement director. So after one coffee, we sort of started talking to each other learning about what she was doing what I wanted to be doing.
And then it sort of snowballed from there. So I think once you have an idea, I guess my suggestion would be to talk to anyone and everyone about it, and then the right introductions will come to be,
again, I had the good fortune of being with being associated with a university. And so that always opens up doors to different resources and capacity that could exist within the academic institutions. So that's not a bad idea to reach out to your local University.
And I think that part of it is universal of courses. And as much as it was one step at a time, it was also a lot of signs and validation from the universe, that this was something that was worth solving. And that was something that I could solve personally. And a lot of serendipitous things happened along the way. And so
in some cases, you just have to have faith and you put the energy into it, and it comes back and does.
And yeah, so I guess just to reiterate, just start and also spend time in the community and talking to people who are within this space.
Morgan Bailey 16:32
I love that. And I think it just sounds I hear like your commitment to be to solving this challenge
brought in you into contact with others who also really cared. And I feel like that's such an important thing. And particularly for entrepreneurs, right? If you want to, if you want to create partnerships with others, like, the more they see that you care, the more they're going to be invested in what you're doing as well.
Sahar Jamal 16:59
I also feel that entrepreneurs, or some entrepreneurs, particularly maybe female entrepreneurs, might be a specific idea of imposter syndrome, like who am I to solve this problem. And I certainly felt that I do feel that on a regular basis, this idea that, you know, maybe I'm not the right person for this, but I believe that, you know, there are very few people who start businesses and start businesses that lasted more than five years. And so if you're, if you're willing to be committed, if you're willing to have faith, if you're willing to put your time and energy into a cause, that you care about, for whatever reason, that's reason enough to do it. For me personally, I'm passionate about women, women's health, women's economic empowerment, and the fact that often women are penalized for their reproductive capacity as opposed to being celebrated and supported. And this idea that there's a trade off between our familial responsibilities and our economic or financial responsibilities is really painful for me to see you having been raised by a working mom, having seen you know, women, and mothers and girls being chastised at every point in their journey, whether it's they have their period, and they can't go to school, or whether it's they've had a child, and they need to miss out on work for a few months or a year.
In all of these areas, we're not considering the fact that these women are providing the great service to society and the raising and nourishing the children's future. And so that's why I'm passionate about it, even though I don't have the direct personal experience. And while I felt impostor syndrome about maybe not being a Kenyan woman, I still felt like I brought the compassion and the commitment that was required to start this process.
Morgan Bailey 18:41
And what I'm also hearing is you also brought the humility, right, that that you didn't necessarily come with all the answers, so to speak.
You came was saying, hey, look, I I can help provide resources and I can help, you know, the drive to build structures and a business around this.
And really, you know, I heard you mentioned the word co create, it was such it was such an important part in that journey. So I'm curious, you know, from the ideation stage, the first prototype, what did it look like? And what has it looked like to build your business from there? And also in terms of funding as well, that's one thing I'm also curious about.
Sahar Jamal 19:26
So the first stage, we only had funding from Northwestern University. So upon graduation, I was fortunate to receive a social entrepreneurship grant that allowed me to start the business. And that's what we use to create the first prototype.
Then joven hits so that was a nice surprise. A graduate 2019 COVID hit March 2020.
Fortunately, during that time, we were still fundraising and development. So it was as necessary to be in person and in Kenya, and we didn't get any funding during that time.
So we really had to make our money stretch. And we were able to partner with a manufacturing plant in China, this small organization that was women run in Shantou. And
I think that that partnership was critical for us because I hadn't had it not come at that time, we would have had a really hard time
either developing our own plan to create something or kind of starting from scratch there. So that partnership really helped us expedite the process, and create the WeMo breastpump, then the next matter of business was testing the product. And luckily, things were opening up by then it was about 2021. So I went back to Kenya, January 2021, and started holding some focus groups had even some kind of immersive, I guess, usage trials where women would take home the prototype, take it to their workplace, use it for several weeks, then maybe use a competitive breast pump, and see how that would work, what the difference was, whether there are any better or more helpful. And so we did that for about two months, where we had hundreds of women trying the pumps, and giving us your feedback, we were able to iterate on the design, the packaging, the brand, various things like that, until we came to our final product. There was some regulatory approvals that we had to go to.
Without boring you in Kenya, one of them is called the Pharmacy and Poisons board. Another one is called cabs, the Bureau of Standards. And so there was a huge kind of things that we had to go through from a regulatory point of view. And then we were able to start importing, we had to create partnerships with freight forwarders, and people who understood customs,
you know, variety of retailers. So there was a lot of partnership and a lot of relationship building that needed to happen.
Around that time is also when I hired more of my team members. So by then we had about five people in our team focused on operations, sales, marketing, and community engagement. And so obviously, hiring more people was critical.
I guess I should mention that we did raise some money at the end of 2020, through an organization called MIT solve. So we got a small grant from them in partnership with the Gates Foundation. And so that additional funding coming right at the exact right time, as COVID was sort of maybe winding down and things were opening up a bit more was perfect timing for our launch.
Yeah, and I guess the rest is history. I mean, the next two or three years we had started selling so our revenue was also funding our growth, we were able to raise grants from the School Foundation Acumen Fund. More recently, Grand Challenges Canada. And so we've brought in more and more funding since then, as well as been able to use our earned revenue to drive our growth. But it's still you know, it still feels like the beginning, there's still a long way to go in terms of growing and scaling. And then what size you are right now, how many? What is your product sales look like? How big is your team?
Yeah, we've sold around 1500 units to paying customers and you reach around 26,000 women and children through our services. So as I mentioned part of our businesses throughout resales and rentals and the other part of our businesses, our services, so engaging moms in mother to Mother support groups, and we look at both of those metrics almost equally, a lot of our grants are supporting that 26,000 number.
And these women are being meaningfully impacted by her mother to Mother support groups.
And we are still scratching the surface to be honest on components of our business such as the rental model, which allows women to rent the pump for a small period of time as long as they might need it for their baby and then return it back to us. We replace the parts and then rented out again, as well as our corporate model that we work with companies to purchase communal and shared breast pumps for their employees. And these two newer components of our for profit business are super critical for reaching lower income women who may not be able to purchase the pump outright. And who are the majority of the population in markets like Kenya.
So yeah, still growing still only based in Kenya. we've piloted in a couple of markets such as South Africa and DRC
Morgan Bailey 24:32
in a very small way, but still scratching the surface in Kenya and have a long way to go before we start aggressively entering new markets. That makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, currently, when you when you look at your business, like what are some of the challenges that you know you're like this is this is one thing that we're going to have to overcome.
Sahar Jamal 24:54
Yeah, there's quite a few I would say there's always a challenge. Here. They're coming up on a day to day
We bases but I think that maybe the two biggest ones. One is this
the fundraising challenge that's ever present, especially as a hybrid, but we're looking at both grants and investment, any of you who are familiar with the investing landscape, the last two years have been well, that last year and a half maybe has been pretty brutal. For from an investment point of view, particularly in markets like Kenya, where the foreign exchange rate inflation rates have been through the roof, completely unexpected.
And in areas like healthcare, which are often considered to be maybe a public good, and not necessarily the most financially lucrative businesses compared to FinTech, for example. And so it's been really tough to raise money in this landscape. And then from a grand point of view, you know, we want to make sure that we are working towards sustainability, we're not always reliant on grants. So as we look at our programs and ways to monetize it, either through grab government funding, partnerships with other NGOs, or working with beneficiaries to pay a reasonable amount for services,
that kind of long term strategy of sustainability within the nonprofit is also a challenge. So I would say that's kind of category one of financial resources. And then category two would be capacity and efficiency as it relates to not only like human resource and human capacity, but also our processes and tools. I think one thing that many entrepreneurs encounter as their organizations get bigger and bigger is that we often quickly outgrow their processes. And so we're finding that a lot of things that needs to be done manually need to start being automated, a lot of our financial tools or ERP or CRM, I'm using a lot of acronyms, I'm sorry, but essentially, our tools that we're using to operate our business are now not as effective as they were when we were 10 times smaller. And so
Morgan Bailey 27:01
it has a bit of a connection to financial resources as it relates to, you know, hiring more people are investing in tools, but is another category that entrepreneurs who are starting to achieve scale will often notice. Yeah, absolutely. You know, having worked with several, you know, organizations that scaled and support a lot of organizations scale, that's, that's definitely one of the most challenging points, you know, it's like, get off paper onto spreadsheets, get off spreadsheets into into a database, you know,
it's a never ending thing. You know, so
I want to kind of pull back for a second, you created a lot here, you're you're making a lot of impact, you also realize that you're just scratching the surface. I'm kind of curious to hear a little about your personal journey. You've talked a little bit about a little bit about.
And I'm not sure if it's a matter of overcoming,
you know, that, that feeling that maybe you're not the right one or just just managing it, but like, what is your journey been like, as a leader in this space? Who are you now that you weren't before? What did you have to grow through to get where you're at?
Sahar Jamal 28:13
Yeah, really great questions. And I think that I'm still growing, and I'm still low, like learning every day.
But there are a few key components of running a social enterprise that are super different than running a business in the corporate world.
One is this idea of considering purpose or considering impact with every decision you make. That's something that I recognized in theory, and I was passionate about, of course, throughout my life and wanted to work in an impactful space. But I don't think I really recognize how difficult it would be in making everyday decisions with our organization, most good social enterprises will balance profit and purpose and impact and profitability will kind of grow in tandem. And we believe that's the case for us as well. At the same time, there's always going to trade offs along the way, in terms of, you know, how do you price your product? What kind of target market do you try and reach?
Who do you fundraise from what kind of money is the appropriate funding to receive for the type of work that you're trying to do in terms of what the funders priorities are going to be? And it's just something that I ever realized. And I think, really
navigating that uncertainty, navigating the complexity, and just being sort of resilient through it all and making tough decisions, like saying no to a funder, even if you really desperately need the money to keep your lights on.
Those are all skills that I think I've subconsciously started inheriting through this work that I never really thought about or expected when I started the organization. And I think, you know, you're familiar with this as well in terms of operating and
in markets where systems work so differently than you might be used to in North America. So I'd love to hear your perspective as well. But I think, again, humility, right. So being humble enough to recognize that the way things operate in Canada may not necessarily be the right way. And maybe there's other relationship building might be super important. Going through the bureaucracy of government might be very critical to get the work that you need to do done. And so being humble and being patient through all those processes, and recognizing that, just because it's unfamiliar doesn't mean that it's not right. I think it's also a critical skill to learn.
Morgan Bailey 30:41
Yeah, I mean, that was that was definitely in my work in East Africa was a big
was a big learning curve,
in terms of how things work, and it was very humbling and ways
in just looking at what the cultural differences, as well as the really, you know, the government and the policies, and all those sorts of things, really understanding that, and it took, yeah, I think it took a little bit of time to really understand what that look like. And I think, also to commitment to the issue in the longer haul, you know, and I think this is one of the beauties that social enterprise and social entrepreneurs have is building a business, you can have a longer term commitment than you can if you're just relying on a two year grant cycle.
Because a lot of times it takes it takes more than two years just to get established somewhere,
let alone, you know, complete a project and report out on impact, you know, as as this kind of the typical way with grants.
Sahar Jamal 31:49
Can I just add there, it's such an interesting paradox, because at the same time, the way that for profit businesses are funded, in a traditional sense, maybe not social enterprises, but in a traditional sense, is super impatient, right? Like people are looking for 10x return and five year horizon, like some of the investment strategies around
venture capital, which are now being adopted by those who invest who are impacted investors or invest in social businesses haven't really adjusted for this longer time horizon, especially in the healthcare space, you know, take longer defined outcomes. It's, I think it's just
as much as you're absolutely right, that you can take a longer time horizon, the right way to do it for this kind of problem.
I'm not sure that our systems have really acknowledged that or adjusted for that.
Morgan Bailey 32:42
And you said something that,
that caught my ear, which is saying no to a specific funder, okay. Now, because what I'm hearing in one way is like, you know, sometimes it's going to take some time. And I think, you know, who you choose to partner with, from a funding perspective is really critical, right, so that they understand the timing, they understand the mission, they're committed to not only the profit piece, but they're also they're also committed to the impact piece, right? Because as you mentioned, there are business trade offs and decisions there. Can you talk to us a little bit of how did you, you know, what is your thinking around the choosing who you take investments from, you know, values alignment, from a funding perspective.
Sahar Jamal 33:30
It's definitely a journey. And in the beginning, it's so tempting to just want to apply to every grant and reach out to every investor, regardless of what that looks like in terms of values and alignment. And over time, you realize that you're not doing yourself, you're doing yourself a disservice if you if you spend your time chasing funders that are not aligned. Both from a funding both from a grant funding and an investment point of view, from a grant point of view, a lot of grants are programmatic or require certain outcomes,
really can cause mission drift, if they're not aligned to what it is that you're already working on, are supporting your existing programs. From an investor point of view, specifically around time horizon and return expectations, there can be a huge misalignment if you're trying to focus on long term impact or system change, or things that maybe require more investment up front and might take longer to the driver return. And an investor is looking for, you know, a three to five year exit or whatever timeframe and that's actually, you know, longer than most and so, really understanding what that looks like, what the return expectations are, what the time horizon looks like, is critical.
And that's been a journey for me as well, especially for as an organization that sort of falls in this middle ground where we have a hybrid. We've had to be really clear that impact is important to us, even within the for profit and we're not going to hike up
Our prices, we're not going to just target behind the moms across Africa, just to be able to grow to 30 new markets next year, we are going to spend time developing products and services and financial packages that are affordable for the lower class and the middle class moms. Because that's what we came here to do. You know, and so
Morgan Bailey 35:21
that inherently is saying no to a whole host of vendors, because that's not what they're looking to invest in. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, you know, we're talking about making these decisions as an impact focused business.
It sounds like, obviously, one decisions that you're having to make is around price point, right? Like we're going to keep these affordable. What other investments do you see yourself making in as a business to really
hone in on that impact, focus or secure that impact focus? Like, what are you investing in as an impact business that maybe you wouldn't be investing in? If you were a traditional for profit business?
Sahar Jamal 36:03
Yeah, I think education is another one. So I would say there's one part of the equation, which is like price point distribution, like last mile distribution, accessibility, and affordability is kind of one category that is critical if you're trying to reach the mass population of low income moms. And then the other one is education in the age of change. I don't think I mentioned this, but in Kenya, only 7% of moms have ever used a breast pump. Those are probably the higher income mums who can afford it by international brands, some of them even import their own pumps from the UK or the US. They're using restaurants, that's great. But the population that we're targeting that has the biggest
challenge and has this huge trade off between working and breastfeeding is the lower income and the middle income moms who have never even heard about using a breast pump, who often haven't realized that they can actually balance both working in breastfeeding. And that behavior change work is
expensive. And it's not easy. And that's why it's also so critical that we have these community breastfeeding ambassadors that are funded by our for a nonprofit organization that were embedded in the community that are working on education, that are creating the foundation of moms who are equipped to start breastfeeding and equipped to continue breastfeeding will learn what breast milk expression looks like, and who will eventually become customers that use a restaurant.
And the larger breasts, companies that are operating globally out of Europe or the US are not going to spend the time and energy to do that. Now, while that might seem like not a great business strategy, the reason it makes sense is because 90% of moms fall within this category. So it's really a volume play. While we're spending time and money educating this population, we're reaching way more mothers than another brand might be able to. And so our goal is to reach this mass population that is completely untapped. And has never used products like this before. And you know, breast pumps are just a starting point, there's a whole host of women's health and maternal health products and services that are not reaching most women in Africa. And so
creating this network of ambassadors is a distribution network and an entry point to reach a population that global manufacturers and companies are just not even worried about or considering. So I think we're investing in
Morgan Bailey 38:33
building a market building a market of mothers who need services and products that are not reaching them. Yeah. And it's such an important piece that you're mentioning there. And I think your highlight, obviously clear the clear opportunity from business perspective, right? And obviously, how you can match those unmet needs. Right. So I think that's kind of where where the the impact in the profit thing. Meat is a large a large untapped market with a huge untapped public health need. So really fascinating stuff. So as as we wind down here, one of just, you know, just appreciating this conversation and both the the heart you bring to this work, and also the the business mindset and acumen, you know, you have a really, really great way of thinking through this in terms of both making the impact focus, but also pragmatic. So I think our listeners are really gonna appreciate the story of how you know how you've got where you are, as we kind of move into close here. The last last question here is around the ask and offers that you have the audience so what what asks, Do you have calls to action, whatever that might be for the audience, what offers Do you have either advice or opportunities?
Sahar Jamal 39:48
Absolutely, I guess first, I would like to offer that if there are any budding entrepreneurs people with an idea, maybe especially female or minority entrepreneurs, that might face additional barriers.
As just starting an organization, I'm really starting to think about mentorship and coaching and working with earlier stage entrepreneurs and organizations. So please feel free to reach out, we'll share some form of contact information along with this.
And I would love to offer that to anyone who's interested in terms of an analyst. As you mentioned, this network, this community, these partners are so critical to any organization's growth. And so as you're listening to this, if you think of anyone that I should speak with, from a partnership point of view, from a funder point of view, people who are working in are passionate about women's or maternal and newborn health in this region. We welcome those introductions.
Morgan Bailey 40:43
Sorry, some amazing, amazing authors and ask there and yeah, excited, you know, really just appreciating the fact that yeah, you're making yourself available to others because, you know, I think the experience that you have can make a really big impact and look forward to seeing how mozzie with growth as we move forward. Thank you so much, Morgan. It was great speaking with you.
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