MommyKidz- Safe pregnancy, Happy Parenting

Problems we are working to solve: 

1. Every year, more than 3.5 million women become pregnant in Bangladesh, and every day, 10,000 babies are born. Among them, 64% of women can’t access midwives or doctors easily. On the other hand, unsafe roads, high transportation costs, and longer waiting periods make mothers and parents highly reluctant to visit a doctor. As a result, the preventable maternal and child mortality rate is still very high. 

2. In our country, 39% of mothers face postpartum depression and severe mental health issues, but due to stigma, they never open up and suffer for life. 

3. Also, In our country, people do not give importance to pre-conceptional counseling and do not even know about it. But with proper pre-conceptional counseling or planning it is possible to reduce complications during pregnancy and it also ensures proper birth weight, and brain development and saves a baby from different kinds of birth defects.

4. Due to a busy lifestyle, an increasing number of working mothers, and a nuclear family style, proper parenting becomes difficult for parents. In our country, parents do not even get proper parenting guidelines, and parents of children with special needs suffer endlessly.  

5. In our country 2% baby have at least one disability and more than 0.8% baby have more than one disability. They do not get enough support and facilities as they deserve. 

6. Unsafe abortion is a common problem in our country. Due to a lack of proper information, security, and fear of society and religion unsafe abortions are done in our country. Though we do not have recent data an estimated 384,000 women suffered complications from clandestine abortion in 2014. 

7.There is no safe community of women, mothers, or parents where they can open up about anything and get community or expert help and guideline

8. In our country, pregnancy and parenting are counted as a sole responsibility of a mother. Women are always left behind when they become mothers. They are often forced to leave their studies and job. As society and family members do not know about their roles and duties towards mother and baby the problem is being bigger day by day. 

9. Every time parents become overwhelmed and forget to choose a sustainable lifestyle for future generations and increases the carbon footprint. 

10. Pregnancy, post-pregnancy, newborn care, or even care for toddlers are four different stages that require different kinds of supportive products and medicines to serve. But most of the time,they are unknown and even unattainable in the big cities io four country. 

Worldwide Situation: 

More or less all of the underdeveloped and developing countries face similar kinds of problems in their pregnancy and parenting journeys. 

According to the WHO, an estimated 810 women continue to die each day due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth, mostly from preventable or treatable causes. Therefore, getting to know about the problem beforehand is crucial to saving a mother's life.

MommyKidz is a one-stop app for all pregnancy and parenting needs. We believe pregnancy is the root of our existence and proper parenting is the root of healthier generations .In our app, we have designed different features that actively give proper solutions for all needs. 

1. Self-care tools: we have designed different self-care tools as a freemium service. There is a period tracker, a fetal tracker ( tracks 280 days of fetal development),  baby growth milestone (tracks 0 to 5 years of a baby’s development), vaccination reminder (for mother and baby), medicine reminder, kick counter, health profile ( recent and previous medical reports and prescriptions), and so many more that help a woman and parents to take care of herself and the baby with proper nutrition and necessary information. Parents often struggle to take care of themself and their babies. By using our app our user life becomes more easier and they can be healthy and ensure their well-being on their own.

2. Article /knowledge library: There is so much important information that needs to be known. In our article library, we have more than 10 thousand articles. Starting from reproductive health, basic knowledge about the period, hygiene, breast cancer, gestational diabetes, food habits, Sexually transmitted infections, mental health in different stages of life and so many more.

3. Digital healthcare: We have designed our healthcare, especially for mother and baby care. There is a 24/7 emergency helpline, doctors and soon midwives are going to serve. Our Digital healthcare starts at 1$ only. Normally mothers or women hesitate to go to a mental health center. According to the social stigma only ‘mad’ goes to the mental healthcare centers. With our platform mothers or anyone with physical or mental health problems can discuss and get care at a very minimum cost. All the information will be protected very safely.

4. Free text consultation: every day we receive more than 130 health-related queries on our platform. Normally women are hesitant to ask any kind of questions. But in our platform, they are highly open about their problems as they are able to ask anything even anonymously. 

5. Door to door midwife service: As soon as possible we are going to introduce door-to-door midwife service it will help to reduce maternal and child mortality.

6. Community and circle: In our app users are automatically connected to a community of women and parents and also circle of similar stage of people. For example, if a mother is 3 month pregnant in her circle she will get other mother who is also 3 month pregnant. 

7. Shop and pharmacy : In our shop each and every kind of supportive products are available and soon we are going to open our online pharmacy. 

8. Awareness about sustainable lifestyle : we are providing washable cloth diapers. And also creating awareness among parents for reducing the use of plastic toys and feeding options as they are also bad for baby.

Our targeted population is women and parents. 

Our initiative is directly and meaningfully helping to improve the overall health and well-being of mothers and parents. 

Basically, through our platforms, we are connected to mothers and parents all over the country. Due to unsafe roads and traffic jams, it is very inconvenient and difficult for expecting mothers or parents to move from one place to another with little babies. But in pregnancy, mothers and parents with little babies need to visit a doctor every now and then. As a result, they are reluctant to visit a doctor, and the problems become bigger. As with our solution, users can get healthcare services at a minimum cost by setting them at home it saves their time, energy, money, and also fuel. 

In rural areas, there is limited access to doctors or service providers. As a result, it becomes very hard to get service when needed. By calling us or from our app anyone will be able to book door-to-door midwife service that will help to save so many lives. We have emergency helpline services for the user who do not have smartphones. They can call us and get emergency help. This is how anyone can get help from us. Every mother and baby is precious to us. Both in rural and urban areas every mother and baby needs support on time. And for providing them service when they need we are working and providing a valuable resource for those who may not have access to local support networks.

I am the co-founder and CEO of MommyKidz and a young mother who has gone through so many difficulties during pregnancy and parenting stage. I know why physical and mental health support and community help are very crucial at this stage. The way I suffered in my motherhood journey I do not want anyone anymore to suffer that way. In my college and university days, I worked in different organizations voluntarily and learned how children are deprived of basic rights and how negative parenting is ruining their lives. To understand the sufferings of lower-income group families we have visited slums and different garment factories. After understanding the problem and lifestyle of the users we have developed all our self-care tools and kept them fully free for the user so that they can have a better understanding of their physical and mental health, hygiene, reproductive health, breast cancer, and so many more issues a women or mother need to know must. We also talked with doctors in rural and urban areas. Find Out the reasons why women do not speak up about the truth about their health.  Some social and religious factors and taboos hold them back. This is why, on our platform, anyone can ask anything even anonymously, and get doctor, midwife, or expert opinion totally free. Now in our platform, every day we receive more than 130 health-related queries and most of the questions can be marked as a social taboo that anyone fears asking about their health. In this way, we are ensuring participation of the people from all over the country and trying to trigger their problems. Some of the solutions are free and some cost as lowest as possible. Right now 10% of our users are from all over the world. They are the Bangla-speaking people who live in different countries. With different language set up, we can reach the mother all over the world. 

Also, our other co-founder has more than 8 years of experience in the multimedia and technology sector. Previously he was a co-founder of another startup called ‘Belancer’. In any situation rather it is an environmental disaster or war mother and baby are the worst sufferer of the situation. This is something he wants to solve at least to some extent. He is also a father, this is he is trying to use his knowledge in the technology field and tries to improve pregnancy and parenting problems with the help of those technologies. 

Also, our CMO and CTO both have more than 15 years of experience in different fields. Again, our CHO (Chief Health Officer) has more than 3 years of experience as a gynecologist. But most importantly she is a mother who had to leave her reputed dream job to raise her baby. She also went through all the family and social barriers after becoming a mother. These sorts of real-life experiences made us a strong team who not only know the problems but also feel those.

Till now we have created awareness among 110k people with the help of social media platforms and a few local events. Also served more than 23000 families with healthcare and essentials with the help of our app and different social media platforms. 

We launched our app on September 15, 2022. Within these 6 months, we have more than 20,000 registered users on our platform. Our daily retention user rate is 24% and our Monthly average engagement time is 46 min. Right now we have Bangla-speaking users from all over the world.

We believe applying to MIT Solve can provide a valuable opportunity for individuals and organizations to access funding, mentorship, partnerships, visibility, and the chance to understand and deep dive into the initiative and help to make a meaningful impact on the world's most pressing challenges. 

Rather than only financial support right now we are equally in need of proper guidelines and collaboration with local and international organizations so that we can create a stronger healthcare facility with a trained midwife team and doctors and experts. Access to a trained midwife team is very crucial for us at this time if we want to make pregnancy and baby care equally available to everyone. For that, we need to have a collaboration with UNFPA or a similar kind of organization. This would be possible and easy for us if we get recognition from a platform like MIT Solve.

We need to learn from a more advanced platform so that we can bring a better version of pregnancy and parenting solutions to our country and the learning opportunity we can avail from MIT Solve will help us with that totally. 

MIT Solve provides a platform to showcase innovative solutions to global challenges, increasing their visibility and reach. This will also help us to make connections with impact investors and to get financial support and mentorship from them.

Our solution is highly innovative and this is why in a short time we got so many users on our platform. There is no similar app in our country right now. In our app, we have 

1. Personalization: Our app is highly personalized to the user's needs and preferences. It provides relevant content and resources based on the user's stage of pregnancy or the age of their child.

1. Interactive: Most importantly our app is interactive and engaging. It provides opportunities for users to interact with other parents and experts, ask questions, and share experiences. 

1. User-friendly: Our app is user-friendly and easy to navigate. It has an intuitive interface that makes it easy for users to find the information they need.

1. One app for all services: Our app provides a one-stop solution. That means parents need not have different apps for different services. For example, tools and services that parents use, such as fitness trackers, nutrition apps, appointment scheduling tools, fetal monitoring, and vaccinations everything is available in one single app. 

1. Customization: our app will allow users to customize their experience by choosing the features they want to use and tailor the content to their preferences.

1. Artificial intelligence: soon we are going to have artificial intelligence (AI) to provide personalized recommendations based on user data and behavior.

1. Accessibility: Our app is in Bangla language which makes it accessible to all parents. 

1. Security: our app is highly secured and protects users' personal information.

1. Continuous improvement: we are constantly updating with new features, content, and improvements based on user feedback and the latest research and trends in pregnancy and parenting.

For the next year: 

1. 100k mothers with all proper physical and mental health solutions

2. Improve the life of working mothers with more services

3. Provide 20k families with sustainable products

4. Reach 40k rural area women with low-price healthcare

5. Reach 150k rural area women and educate them about our app. 

For next five years: 

1. Reach to 60% of mothers with proper physical and mental healthcare

2. Reduce 80% of preventable maternal and child mortality with proper information and timely services

3. Remove superstition and stigma about mental health and physical health

4. Reduce preventable birth defects and low birth weight with proper precenceptional counceling. 

5. Provide door to door midwife service to 80% of the families who do not have access to professional midwife service.

We are measuring our progress in two was. One is done manually and the one is by using Different KPIs of our app. 

After providing any freemium or premium service we talk to our users over the phone and take their responses. And this is how we try to know the impact of our services. 

Also we try to measure the impact by the number of the user increasing monthly, their average engagement time, daily retention number, and the number of user taking healthcare of free text consultancy services from us. 

1. Inputs: we need to update and maintain the app in a timely manner. With the changes in our society, healthcare solutions, and user preferences, we need to update and maintain our app. Along with that, we have to update the information, educative content, video content, self-care tools, and other services timely. Also, we will build up a more strong health team of doctors and midwives.  For that, we have to input proper funding, technology, and human resources. 

1. Activities: we will have several actions to achieve our goals. Every time we will provide an improved version of information/knowledge, healthcare, essentials, and parenting solution. We are very much focused on our goal and all the activities are designed to achieve them accordingly. 

1. Outputs: with all the inputs and activities we have estimated to get 1m registered users within 2 years. Among them, we have a target to provide 40%  proper physical and mental healthcare. With online and offline activities we will able to create among 1.5m people. User engagement will increase by 3000% 

1. Outcomes: It will have a great outcome. People's behavior will change towards expecting mothers, they will have an improved knowledge about prenatal, pregnancy, postnatal, and baby care. Users will have improved maternal and fetal health outcomes, and greater parental confidence and satisfaction. Preventable maternal and child mortality rates will decrease. Everyone will know the process and importance of safe abortion. Society will take infertility, autism, and disability as normal life issues and never bully anyone. 

1. Impact: The broader societal changes resulting from the app's outcomes, such as improved maternal and child health outcomes, reduced healthcare costs, and improved quality of life for families.

We provide app-based solutions. By using our app, users can avail themselves of all the services we provide. Most importantly, we are building a strong women's and parent's community that is also app based. 

The app requires a database to store information such as due dates, appointments, baby milestones, health profiles, etc. This data is typically stored using cloud-based databases such as Firebase, AWS, or Google Cloud. We also use push notifications to alert users about important information such as vaccination reminders, appointment reminders, medication schedules, and other events related to their pregnancy and baby. Rather than that, we want to embrace any kind of new technology that can help to make pregnancy and parenting easier than ever before. We have plans to introduce artificial intelligence and wearable technology (Some pregnancy and parenting apps integrate with wearable technology such as smartwatches or fitness trackers to track the user's health and activity levels). 

We use AES-256 encryption to encrypt data & use a strong password policy with host-based connections. The database server is not publicly available; it's on a private VPC.

We have different policies and practices to promote gender equality in the workplace. 

1. Equal Pay: We ensured equal pay for equal work from the beginning. 

1.  Period Leave/Work from Home: We provide both period leave and work-from-home opportunities for women who feel discomfort or significant pain during their period. 

1. Parental Leave for Men and Women: We have a policy to provide parental leave for both mothers and fathers. 

1. Hire mothers with high potential but left jobs to raise a baby: The ‘No one left behind’ agenda will never get the proper justice until we can ensure work opportunities for mothers who left their job due to pregnancy or raising babies. We have appointed two doctors who had left their job for the sake of their families. Right now they work from home and provide text consultancy services for our users. We will also in future hire more mothers and give them flexible work schedules because the power of mothers is inevitable for any organization. 

1. Diverse Hiring: We always believe workplace diversity is something that powers up the work environment with diverse ideas. We have a plan to hire a diverse group of people. As we want to serve a diverse group of people without hiring a diverse group of people it will be impossible for us. 

Not only that we also highly recommend gender-responsive products and services and continuously conduct research on them. In our country, mothers never get the importance they deserve. Due to massive changes in body and lifestyle, mothers need more attention so that they can cope with this new normal. As every motherhood and parenting journey is different, we provide customized products and services to mothers. And we are trying to improve all of them by collecting feedback from the users. 

Also, our organization has a plan to use inclusive and diverse marketing strategies that challenge gender stereotypes and appeal to a broad range of consumers. To achieve that we have planned some marketing strategies that can challenge gender stereotypes and promote diverse marketing. For example, we want to go for influencer marketing with people of different races, ages, genders, and family structures. We also want to make the language easier for every race of people all over our country. Also, soon we are going to make marketing and content about how a mother can navigate pregnancy and parenting as a person with a disability.

We have a very simple business model which is to add value first and then earn revenue. 

We provide all of our products and services through our app. While using our app a user automatically get connected to a community of mother and parents and also get connected to a circle of same life stage people. They get different kinds of self-care tools and also free text consultations with doctors, midwives, and experts. Also, get plenty of important articles that help them meet all their queries. This is how we add value for time and retain the user on our platform. 

After that, according to the stage of the user, we suggest to them the necessary product and services that they may need to support their pregnancy and parenting journey. The services are designed to ensure the overall health and wellbeing of the user. As every pregnancy and every baby is different we offer customized services for the user's demand and this is how we generate revenue.

We have several plans for becoming financially sustainable. 

1. Selling products and services: Mother and baby care products are very essential. We are selling authentic mother and baby products at the lowest possible price. Also, we sell some premium physical and mental healthcare services and parenting courses for parents. By increasing the range of products and adding different services we want to be more financially sustainable. 

2. Donations and Grants: we have so many freemium services. Even most of our services are free so that we can make a positive impact along with everyone in our community. To make those services better and to reach more sufferers we will look for donations and grants. 

3. Equity investments: As we have a plan to reach all over the world we will need some big investments and guidelines for that we also have a plan to raise equity investments.

We recently launched our app. As most of our services are app-based, we were taking some time to gain some traction first and then to apply for grants.  

Our last year's revenue was $59,000 USD. Also, our last 4 months' revenue was $21,000 USD. 

At the very beginning of our initiative, we raised $30,000 USD from friends and family. His name is MD. Fazlaa Rabbi. 

We also got credit both from AWS which was $6000 USD and also from Microsoft for startup $25,000 USD.