Denis Opudo
In the whole world, mothers are known as dedicated people who are always ready to give all their best in whatever they do. Furthermore, they are not choosy in that they are always ready to take in whichever role that is there. Mothers can be teachers, doctors or even fathers depending on the situation at hand. But at times playing all those roles can be a burden to them which can drain away much of their energy.
The hardest part of it all is for the first time mothers. They tend to get it hard in most cases when it comes to balancing between bringing up their kids, their professions and working on their body changes before and after pregnancy. This if not handled well can lead to emotional depression which can cause extensive life challenges at last. Therefore, it calls for the commitment to share out the necessary information within the right period. Companies across the globe are checking on communities that do parenting as an important development area. BabyCenter is a US-based startup that offers a platform for first-time parents for working on their concerns. There are also other important players in the market such as Peanut and Circle of Moms.
China-based BabyTree has secured a seed funding worth $783 million. Beibei from China is also valued at $1 billion. The Indian market has many startups like Tinystep, ZenParent, Parentune, Babychakra, and BabyGogo. Started in 2014 Mamalette offers women a platform to share important infant health information and lifesaving information. This takes place through group meetings, awareness campaigns and peer support.
Nigeria is one of the African countries with the highest number of mortality rates. Therefore it is not always a walk in the park when it comes to giving birth in that country. Unicef data states that 88% of the global maternal deaths come from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest ratio of maternal mortality that is 546 maternal deaths in every 100,000 live births. This can also represent a total of 201,000 maternal deaths annually. This is 66% (two thirds) representation of all maternal deaths every year worldwide.
In 2015 Nigeria recorded 841 deaths for every 100,000 live births. The second region after Nigeria is South Asia with 66,000 maternal deaths annually. It accounts for 22% of the world’s total. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mortality ratio for children below 5 years in Nigeria is 201 in every 1,000 live births. This means that in every five kids one of them do not get to see his fifth birthday. Therefore Mamalette aims at improving health results for expectant mothers and socially excluded or vulnerable mothers beginning with its online group. Anika Lawal the startup’s founder is a holder of Master’s Degree in Law and Accounting from the London School of Economics. She also has a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Studies and French from Trinity College Dublin. She says that she decided to come up with Mamalette due to lack of information about motherhood and pregnancy in Nigeria.
She had to quit her well-paying job so as to concentrate on developing the platform. The platform has so far managed to reach out to more than 3 million mothers since the launch. The startup is presently in Lagos, Oyo and Ogun states in Nigeria. They have used their live event called Mamalette Live to reach out to 3,000 women in Lagos. The firm has massively grown via covering its activities in press and active engagement through social media.
The startup currently has put up a local health network for African mothers beginning with Nigeria. it is using this centres to train and equip mothers as health experts to assist women to get the right health information for their families and their own good. Mamallete together with other three startups were admitted to co-creation hub’s Incubation program in 2015. Through the program, it managed to take home seed funding ranging between $15K and $25k. It also got mentoring, office space and business development support from the program. Furthermore, Mamalette participated in the U.S. Department of State-sponsored Gist Tech1 2018 and got up to the semi-finals.
