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Divine intervention: How two Indian women are helping mothers ‘thrive’ with little help from Apple

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Mamma-Miya, Apple, Apple WWDC 2021, WWDC 2021, Apple Entrepreneur Camp, WWDCMamma-Miya is an iOS app designed “to assist busy moms to declutter their thoughts, keep organised and make room for what issues to them.” (Photograph credit score: Saurabh Singh/Monetary Specific)

Aashika Chittiappa spent her educational years at premier establishments throughout India, Germany and the UK primarily focussed on enterprise administration, and eventually specialising in finance and advertising. She started her profession in finance at Ernst & Younger after which moved into sports activities advertising with a few of the world’s largest sporting properties and types. However when she turned a mom for the primary time in 2015, and determined she — lastly — wanted some break, she realised there have been simply too many gaps, too many struggles in her expertise that she was not ready for. She wasn’t alone. Just about each mom she was in contact with was going trough the identical ups and downs. It was at this level she took a name to not return to an everyday profession and begin Mamma-Miya.

It began as a small WhatsApp group. In time, this little WhatsApp group changed into a very large Fb group, purely organically, reworking into this actually stunning, open house the place moms would deliver up all types of points and discuss them.

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Chittiappa and her co-founder on the time, Sarah Chandy, would spend the following two years assembly and interviewing moms from all over the world, attempting to know their issues and matching them with theirs and search for methods to resolve them. They’d additionally speak to moms of their fifties and sixties, who appeared “sorted”, had fabulous careers whereas making time for all of the relationships that mattered to them, to know what they had been doing to indicate up “so totally” in life.

It was all about bringing mindfulness and intention and setting sure objectives and planning your life higher — all this could ultimately turn out to be the North Star for Mamma-Miya, an iOS app designed “to assist busy moms to declutter their thoughts, keep organised and make room for what issues to them,” Chittiappa tells Monetary Specific On-line.

The divine intervention

Till someday, Chandy left the corporate for private causes and for a 12 months and a half, “it virtually felt like issues had been coming to a grinding halt,” as a result of Chittiappa had no tech background in any way. It was tough to discover a alternative.

She put the job profile on a outstanding web site that encourages ladies who’ve taken profession breaks to begin over once more as a result of she felt “you needed to be a mom or fully empathise together with her state of affairs to construct the correct of a product, in any other case it could be purely theoretical.” After sifting by means of round 100 CVs, she chanced upon iOS developer, Namrata Mayanil, and was “simply blown away by the form of expertise that she had.”

It was not nearly her expertise as an Apple veteran, however her worth system and imaginative and prescient for the corporate — contemplating she herself is a mom of two kids who’re older than Chittiappa’s — that it felt virtually like divine intervention that, had she not met her at the moment, she didn’t understand how for much longer she would have been capable of maintain that ship of Mamma-Miya on her personal. The co-founder synchronicity was superb, and it was clear early on that with Mayanil on-board, “Mamma-Miya was on its approach someplace.”

Mamma-Miya, Apple, Apple WWDC 2021, WWDC 2021, Apple Entrepreneur Camp, WWDCAashika Chittiappa (proper) and Namrata Mayanil (left) are co-founders of Mamma-Miya. (Photograph credit score: Apple)

Mamma-Miya’s distinctive proposition is that it’s purely digital. It’s easy and straightforward to make use of. It’s proper on the cusp of productiveness and wellbeing.

“We don’t wish to be this place the place moms are spending an infinite period of time, however we wish to give them time again to allow them to use it for the issues that matter to them,” Chittiappa says, including “it’s actually about bringing extra goal and peace to the lives of those moms.”

Typically, there are numerous issues that keep of their minds that trigger this loop, which endlessly runs and takes away numerous their power after which “you are likely to miss issues, issues have a tendency to slide from the cracks.”

Mamma-Miya helps create a seamless bridge the place they will “simply dump that thought and get it out and get transferring in life” by means of an idea referred to as “mind dump” with out placing a schedule to it. One other idea referred to as “hats” lets moms see their life by the completely different hats they put on.

“As a mom, it’s essential for me to have the ability to stability my time and thoughts house and be capable to do justice to all of the completely different roles that I’ve.”

A stroke of magic

One high-quality day in 2020, even because the “two-mom crew” was having a kind of discussions about product roadmap, Mayanil acquired an unlikely e-mail. Chittiappa calls it “a stroke of magic by the universe.” It was a mail from Apple.

The iPhone maker had actually favored their work and wished to hook up with understand how they may assist enhance Mamma-Miya and take it to a lot of different individuals who may want it. This may be a part of Entrepreneur Camp, an Apple initiative to have a good time and encourage ladies founders and builders to construct the “subsequent era of cutting-edge apps” by means of one-on-one code-level steerage, mentorship, and insights from prime engineers and leaders. Chosen groups additionally obtain one 12 months of membership within the Apple Developer Program, assist from an Apple Developer consultant for at the least one 12 months, and entry to the Apple Entrepreneur Camp alumni community along with being invited to Cupertino for WWDC freed from price (this is happening virtually this year in the wake of a global pandemic).

“When you take a look at the product we took to Apple and once you take a look at the product now we have as we speak, between the App Accelerator and the Entrepreneur Camp, it’s virtually an unrecognisable product not simply when it comes to the tech piece, however even when it comes to the packaging and the conceptualisation. It has advanced so fantastically after our affiliation with Apple,” Chittiappa says.

One of many issues that basically moved her was a session by Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice chairman of surroundings, coverage and social initiatives. It was about creating extra mindspace for the surroundings in a single’s every day lives, one thing that impressed them to incorporate an “surroundings hat” within the app. A slew of different product demo classes in the meantime helped articulate their what/ who/ why in underneath three minutes, one thing that’s simpler mentioned than finished, in line with Chittiappa.

Mayanil says getting in contact with design evangelists at Apple has helped deliver high quality and worth to the app along with what she calls “the Apple simplicity.” Collectively, they’ve introduced Siri integration and iOS widgets to Mamma-Miya on iPhone and iPad at the same time as work is on to implement machine studying framework into it to make it extra clever (in a really inclusive and helpful sense).

A number of the most enjoyable discussions the crew has had with Apple is a couple of new part referred to as “insights” that might assist moms “make higher choices sooner or later foundation of how they’re doing this within the current.” The characteristic is predicted to be rolled out within the subsequent couple of months.

“With out Apple’s handholding and inspiration by means of the entire course of, I feel we would by no means have been capable of articulate and visualise it so fantastically.”

What’s outstanding — and provoking — is that Mamma-Miya has grown “fully organically” to date with none advertising spend in any way.

“We nonetheless have actually small numbers however response has been constant over the previous couple of years and 80-85 % of our customers come from exterior of India, predominantly from the US, adopted by Australia, the UK and enormous components of Europe.”

The co-founders aren’t involved a lot concerning the numbers although. They’re actually targeted on fixing an issue — to assist moms thrive, moderately than simply survive all through their motherhood journey — and “development will come after we fully nail the product market match.”

Additionally Learn | The story of Wysa: How an Indian startup built a mental health chatbot for the world

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