airbnb for breastmilk
My wife is giving birth to a “twin” this May — one is our baby boy and the other one is her side project mobile app startup. While she is staying back in Cebu, Philippines to have the baby delivered, she is going to oversee a soft-launch of the mobile app we are currently developing. While the mobile app is her idea, I am helping her do some technical stuff whenever I am free. The main purpose of the app is to become a social platform/marketplace for breastfeeding mothers. She calls it “HandyNanay. For moms, by moms.”
She had always wanted to breastfeed our children since our first born, but because of commitment to work and lack of milk produced, she had to stop when she had just already started and switched to formula. This time, she wanted to breastfeed the new baby again, but knowing her commitment to work she might face the same challenge of stopping her breastfeeding journey again. Although this time she is more prepared — she browses through the Internet to research ahead and see how other working mothers do it. It turns out that it is not only her having this problem — there a lot of mothers out there who wants to breastfeed but faces the same dilemma. Searching for solutions on the Internet like a marketplace or any local website to do logistics and deliver breast milk within one’s zone was a failure as there was none. She can only find Facebook groups or forums doing it. In Instagram, it’s even more difficult to find for non-tech-savvy moms. That’s why she thought of a possible solution to address this problem, which is to build a marketplace app for this market — an app that can do selling/buying/donating of breast milk in the Philippines, and maybe in the future the whole of Asia.
One day, I received an email from her, which stated, “I already have a solution! Build me this app, ASAP!” and I was like “Ahhh, okay, so when do you need it?” She replied, “next month!” Luckily, I have some mobile app development background so I scrambled some tech here and there to come out with a prototype and she liked it. Although I initially implemented this, I’m not going to do the entire development as she is going to hire her team of developers if this idea takes off because I also have my full-time job in an uber cool startup here in Singapore.
We all know that breastfeeding is best for babies as it boosts an infant’s immune system as well as prevents malnutrition. And as it turns out there is a big market in this niche area as we tried to dig more into it. There was a survey conducted by UNICEF in the Philippines, which shows that only 34% of infants below 6 months drink exclusive breast milk. The two most notable reasons for such are 1) mothers don’t have enough milk and 2) mothers are returning back to work. There really is an opportunity here for the mobile app to tap. Also, in terms of customer retention, the survey shows that 34% of those who breastfeed continues until the child is 2 years old. Of course, in terms of supply, a data from WHO will validate that this is a sustainable business model. Based on WHO website, “Of the 135 million babies born every year, only 42% are breastfed within the first hour of life, only 38% of mothers practice exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months and 58% of mothers continue breastfeeding up to the age of two years.”
We conducted a short poll in Cebu, Philippines to validate this. It’s a revelation that the top two reasons why mothers stop breastfeeding are the same reasons stated above. Furthermore, asking them if they are willing to sell or buy milk through a mobile app shows a huge 80% of the respondents saying yes. Also, 90% of them are in the age range of 25–34, which is mostly the Millennial and Gen Y who are educated and well informed.
The data above shows that there is a potential for this app to take off and can even scale — imagine deploying it to the whole Philippines or even in South Asia alone: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia.
This niche market is a goldmine ready to be tapped and HandyNanay is going to lead the way for it. The term “Nanay” is a Filipino equivalent for a mother.
Interested mothers can subscribe through the website www.handynanay.co and they will receive the first version of the app.
