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#women #men #periods #menstruation #health #sanitation #india #azadi #azadi pads

Impact Engine Community Demo Day

Thanks for all the positive tweets!

Why do 2 20ish men start a feminine hygiene company? B/c of Puja, a bright young woman who dropped out when she started her period #Impact1

— sharonschneider (@sharonschneider) January 9, 2013

30% of girls in school in rural India drop out because of menstruation. #impact1 @azadipads

— ImpactEngine (@TheImpactEngine) January 9, 2013

Helping women reach their full potential thru female hygiene @azadipads @theimpactengine #impact1

— Jamie N. Jones (@KelloggImpact) January 9, 2013

Someone needs to hurry up and marry the @azadi guys. #impact1 they care.

— Romke de haan (@romke) January 9, 2013

Awesome! Two males in their early 20s working on feminine hygiene product solutions in India azadipads.com #impact1

— Jennifer Maddrell (@JenM) January 9, 2013

Girls in rural India lack access to sanitary products and so skip school one week every month until they fall too far behind. #Impact1

— sharonschneider (@sharonschneider) January 9, 2013

30% of girls in school in rural India drop out because of menstruation. #impact1 @azadipads. Makes me realize what I take for granted.

— Jessica Schultz (@JessicaLouiseS) January 9, 2013

Traditional retail outlets don't work in rural India. Women don't have access to feminine hygiene products. #impact1 @azadipads

— ImpactEngine (@TheImpactEngine) January 9, 2013

Kudos to @azasipads for digging deeper, addressing a real root cause of education issues in India. #impact1

— Drew DePriest (@drewdepriest) January 9, 2013

.@sarahcmalin and I agree. RT @romke: Someone needs to hurry up and marry the @azadi guys. #impact1 they care.

— Melanie Kahl (@melaniekahl) January 9, 2013

Azadi Pads partnering with Indian NGOs to build a distribution network of rural women entrepreneurs to overcome cultural barriers. #Impact1

— sharonschneider (@sharonschneider) January 9, 2013

Making menstruation a "non-issue" in rural India @azadipads #Impact1

— Q-it (@QitVideo) January 9, 2013

An amazing and truly inspiring group of entrepreneurs at the Impact Engine event tonight. #Impact1 #1871

— Anthony Vitagliano (@a_vitagliano) January 9, 2013

Azadi brought it home. #Impact1

— chuck templeton (@ctemp) January 9, 2013

One of the things that is so unique about social entrepreneurship—it is not business as usual. It is not about a company executive or a small group of people making a decision to change the world. By its very nature it includes everyone. Social Entrepreneurship links people from all over the world to the innovation that can create sustainable change. It unleashes human potential for doing well by doing good.

Sam Caster, Founder of Mannatech

Azadi Logo Design Process

The design process is exactly what it sounds like: a process. It’s almost never a bolt out of the blue (I wish that happened more often); instead, it’s a progression of drafting, editing, and refinement.

The first thing I did when I started the design is brainstorming, and lots of it. I like to spend quite a bit of time researching. This was especially true in this case, since India has a rich heritage in art. Once I gathered information, I found that making lists and word association maps were helpful for sorting out what directions to explore.

At this point, I began sketching. I started off with many thumbnail sketches - in this case, there were about fifty. From there I narrowed things down to three concepts and refined the results. These sketches were then rendered digitally.

The three finalists were presented to the team as a whole. Feedback is a very important part of the design process: not only were the prototypes shown to the team, but were also distributed through informal surveys and presented to mentors at Impact Engine. Once I receive feedback, I go back and refine and create more sketches. This process of sketching and presenting is done two more times, at which point a design is agreed on.

Once the final design was chosen, it was a matter of nailing down details, such as typography, colors, and spacing. An identity standard was drawn up: this document is a reference for future designers on the proper usage of the logo.

#design #logo #process #azadi

hilamehr-deactivated20130429

“The best advice I have for founders of a social enterprise start up: Establish a learning culture. Attract individuals who value their own talent growth and get excited about new insights.”

From “Hiring Talent for the Social Enterprise Means Going Young” in SSIR (via hilamehr)

Impact Engine: Indiegogo Campaign Launch Party

A year and half ago, when Dhiren, my co-founder and I were providing merit-based scholarships to students in rural India, we came across another problem. We found that many girls dropped out of school even after receiving financial help. As we dug deeper, we found that the problem was a lot bigger than we’d thought. There are 300 million (that's the population of the U.S.) girls and women in rural India that miss school and work because they lack access to feminine hygiene products. We were stunned that such a simple problem could so dramatically affect people’s lives. We had to solve this problem. We built a team in India that is working on operationalizing the business. Currently, they are working with engineers to create a machine that can produce affordable sanitary pads. Here in Chicago at the Impact Engine, the U.S. team is building the Azadi brand and a community of mentors, investors and supporters to propel the business forward. Now we’ve reached the next chapter of our story. Investor Day is fast approaching, and our team is really cranking up the gears. Since the start of Impact Engine 9 weeks ago, so much has happened behind the 1871 doors - and we’re ready to show people what we’ve been up to.

We’ve managed to progress quite a lot on our own, but now we need your help. In order to start creating better machines and distributing them to communities in rural India, we are launching an Indiegogo campaign with a goal of raising $65,000. We’ve already raised $50,000 and will use the money from the campaign to complete the research and development of the machine. Our vision is a world where women and girls can have greater freedom to pursue life’s opportunities. Making menstruation a non-issue is one of the stepping stones. The journey is really just beginning and we hope you can be part of the solution. Join us for the launch of our IndieGoGo campaign. We will be premiering our campaign video, and more importantly, celebrating the start of something great. What: Azadi Launch Party When: Wednesday, November 7, 6:30 pm Where:

1871 @ 12th Floor of Merchandise Mart 222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza Chicago, IL 6065.

RSVP here (www.azadilaunch.eventbrite.com)

#impact engine #chicago #startup #indiegogo #india #azadi #pads #azadi pads #networking #event #women

#startup #infographic #india #sanitation #menstruation #women #info #health #education #azadi #sanitary pads #pads

Impact Engine (1/3 of the way through)

We’re a third of the way through the IE program at 1871- it’s hard to believe that we’ve already completed 4 of 12 weeks. So what’s it been like? It’s been a whirlwind! Here are a few things to note: Our Team: Our team is really shaping up! In addition to the operations components of our team, we’ve built a U.S. team that is hard at work with respect to social media, public relations, web design, and graphic design. The work we are set out to do at Azadi is serious - we’re trying to provide a solution to a huge problem that negatively impacts the lives of a huge market. But there is something to be said about approaching our work collaboratively and whole-heartedly... and with a good sense of humor (and what we’re saying is that it’s super important). Impact 1: A common concern for cohorts is a dynamic of internal competitiveness. This isn’t the case for our cohort (though our growing Ping Pong tournament ladder is getting pretty intense). In fact, a great deal of our key insights are coming from other businesses in our cohort. Our cohort is a gold mine of incredibly intelligent and insightful minds. If you walk by the space we occupy in the SW corner of the 1871 space, you’ll find a group of people spanning from engineers to educators to tech guys. We all benefit from collaboration as we continue to find synergies between our eight businesses while we work together. 1871: 1871, by design, is where teamwork and innovation flourish. The open layout of coworking space along with the awesome people that work in it is a winning combination. We can literally travel a few feet in any direction and ask people we cross paths with for feedback on something we’re working on, whether they’re a part of Impact Engine or not - the beauty is that we can approach anyone and we are likely to find someone who is willing to help. With a steady supply of pizza and beer, 1871 isn’t a bad place to camp out for 3 months (but seriously - we think some people might live here). And it’s not just about improving our business skills. We get to work on our motor skills, too (to work off the pizza and beer). The Razor scooter is the prefered mode of transportation around here. It’s the time-efficient way that people get around the space in a stylish - yet daring - manner. Fun and Games: In addition to the interacting and bonding that we do in our workspace, we make time for fun and games outside the office when we can. Two of our favorites thus far are:

1) Smart Bet Charity Poker Tournament: Azadi advanced to Round 2 with the second best score at our 1871 table; our strategy of folding repeatedly did the trick!

2) Cubs game outing in a lavish Pritzker Group suite: it was the last game of the season and the Cubs won at the bottom of the 9th! (with our dessert cart, it wouldn’t have mattered either way - you weren’t kidding about this, Chuck!) VIP Access: The foot traffic of VIPs at 1871 is truly spectacular. The list is extensive, but here are a few words of advice we’ve gotten from Impact Engine visitors:

In explaining what it means to find the right investors for our ventures, Belly Founder and CEO, Logan Lahive cautioned: “A lot of people think you’re just looking for money - but you’re looking for partners.” There’s good money and there’s bad money!

To set off our meeting, Mission Measurement Co-Founder and CEO, Jason Saul advised: “Set your intention for this practice.” He’s a huge yoga advocate and encourages us to apply this principle to our venture endeavors.

Stay tuned - we’ll do this again at the halfway mark!

Clarity affords focus.

Thomas Leonard

Applying “Lean” to a social venture

“If you think you have certainty as a startup, you’re dreaming.” Bernhard Kappe and Todd Wyder prefaced our Lean Startup discussion with this statement; after all, a startup is, by lean definition, is “a human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty.”

A key goal of the lean methodology is to run several minimal experiments to get as much direct feedback from the consumer / customer as possible... “So... how are you going to test that?” Our team heard this several times as Jamie Jones and Linda Darragh coached us through each of the canvases. These experiments are key to decreasing the uncertainty of the business while learning inexpensively. These learnings validate or falsify hypotheses, which may lead to major pivots.

Major pivots are brought on by either changing the problem to be solved or changing the target market for which the solution is being offered. A key driver of this could be customer acquisition costs (CAC) being too high (in comparison to lifetime value of the customer). We are looking to mitigate our CAC by sharing them with our business partners. Because awareness is low, cultivating awareness and education around female hygiene and our product will be a great cost. But pivots are okay: as Chuck Templeton told us, “Stay connected to your vision - not your solution.” Azadi has been exploring different entry points to launching a pilot project come January. In the past month, our discoveries about the market landscape of rural India have lead us to shift our go-to-market strategy from a B2C to a B2B approach. We are currently investigating how to employ a franchising model to establish profitable partnerships with community-based organizations (CBOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). We feel this model design will be most successful in addressing the unmet accessibility, availability, and affordability needs our market faces with respect to female hygiene products.

The biggest challenge is designing an experiment to test receptiveness of our product and whether or not people will buy it. When it comes to startups in the social enterprise space, we’ve quickly discovered that these challenges will manifest themselves in various ways. For our venture, and others in the Impact Engine that have a physical product offering in an international market, this is particularly challenging because market testing is not easy to do when removed from the market.

From a customer segment perspective, we learned that our target market isn’t simply the 300 million girls and women and rural India that do not use sanitary pads due to the “3 A’s” constraints. We need to “dial in” on segments of this population (by geography, demographics, etc.) to narrow our audience down to a target. Our team in India has already identified geographic entry points to market and is currently designing field research to get to know our customers better.

We plan to print a poster size of the canvas and put it on our wall at IE to macke sure we look at it everyday. With the understanding that most people overbuild their Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), the ultimate challenge is: how do we build an MVP that keeps our value proposition intact? A possible way to test the market is with existing products - we are currently investigating this possibility.

Click to tweet

#lean #startup #impinv #socent #impact engine #impact #startups #lean startup #pivot #chuck templeton #cbo #ngo #india #1871

User-Centered Design with Greater Good Studio

Hats off to Sara and George - they weren’t kidding when they called this training a “bootcamp” - it was intense enough to earn this title, and just as rewarding. What better way to start off the morning than with some INSANITY for your brain?! Over the course of the week, we went through exercises in research, synthesis, concepting, prototyping, and storytelling. We didn’t expect to be drawing stick figures or to be analyzing Snow White... or to be spontaneously pitching prototypes to unsuspecting patrons walking down the hall (shout-out to @ctemp for the great recruits). All the exercises we did were geared toward learning how to find themes in our research, derive insights from these, and design opportunities for our business.

A few quotes from GGS that we’ve adopted as team mantras:

“Great design never sacrifices one stakeholder for another.”

This principle is particularly critical for us as our stakeholders, from donors to consumers, span different continents and cultures. While we have a gender- and geography-specific product, it would be a grave mistake to pigeonhole ourselves into gender- and geography-specific stakeholders. We’re actively working to manage expectations for all stakeholders.

“Wild, crazy ideas can be brought down to Earth.”

The opposite is much more difficult to accomplish - that is, to take an ordinary idea and shoot for the stars to make it something extraordinary. The most memorable portion of this training was a brainstorm session during which generated over 100 insightful ideas in about an hour. It certainly helped that everyone’s drawing skills were mediocre at best.

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” In other words, “it is preferable to have a small but certain advantage than the mere potential of a greater one.” True that. It is easy to spiral off into the “what-ifs” of the future - of what our product could be, of how many Twitter followers we could have, of how much money our future IndieGoGo campaign could raise - but in fancying our future as a company, we need to first prioritize and harness the victories present in our realities that will get us there. “Schedule time for serendipity.” Design user-centered research is a rigorous process - but it exists in a flexible framework that we should leverage to drive unexpected insights - this will be our way to finding creative entry points to our market. Moving forward, we are designing user-centered research to conduct in-field research with our target consumer. Our key objective is to explore “workarounds” - to immerse ourselves in the lives of these girls and women to elicit anecdotes that not only identify the ways in which they are satisficing and employing makeshift solutions to address menstruation, but also to bring to the forefront how this target group would address menstruation under ideal circumstances.

This will bring light to the physical and emotional struggles these women and girls face with menstruation. Then, we need to let our consumers know that they are satisficing and that they don’t have to. We need to make evident that there our sanitary pad solution far surpasses rags, jute, and plastic in making menstruation a non-issue in their lives. Thank you, Sara and George! These five days of bootcamp have had a critical impact on the “greater good” of our business. (designer’d!)

Azadi Field Visit

We just spent 8 days in the areas of Uttarkhand and Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh exploring the rural Indian market and learning more about the lives of the women and girls who live there. Our main objectives were to gain a better understanding of the sanitary pad market and to immerse ourselves in the day-to-day culture in these villages. Through conversations with women entrepreneurs, NGOs and community-based organizations (CBOs), we were also able to identify critical channels needed to distribute our product. In our conversations, we discovered that women do have basic awareness of sanitary pads - but they do not have easy access to them. These findings lead us to believe that there is a market for our product. Here are a few pictures from the trip that help capture our journey:

We were lost in the fields of Uttarkhand... while finding our way, we stopped to hang out and eat corn with these kids on their farm.

We talked to an organization working in Haldwani, Uttarkhand, since 1990 on community development, particularly by creating micro enterprises for women.

Women of this community in Uttarkhand often hold meetings to learn and share new skill sets. This time, they have come together to learn how to use a calendar.

This is a microenterprise of women in Uttarkhand who make and sell achar (Indian pickle).

These girls were walking home from a day of school in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh.

We learned more about the business of this woman entrepreneur that owns a roadside shop in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh.

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