immi watch

There are over 300M women who don't have access to mobile internet who can't therefore use period tracking apps. Our immi watch allows you to track your menstrual cycle and gives tailored alerts for when you are due on your period and in your most fertile window. It's low-cost, only requires one data entry point, has a 12-15month battery life (using standard 3V lithium batteries), gets smarter over time and doesn't require connectivity to an app or a smartphone. By wearing an immi watch, you can prepare for when you will have your period, you can know when you're in your most fertile window, and you can detect various illnesses by monitoring the regularity / irregularity of your cycle.

Increasing girls in learning: It's estimated that over 100M girls drop out of school due to menstruation each year, and there are over 74M unplanned pregnancies. Decreasing school dropouts is vital for a healthy economy and society as every additional year of secondary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 15 - 25% (UNICEF). Keeping girls in school requires a multi-pronged approach and currently there is a lot of focus on providing products, but none to empower girls so they know when they need products and the link between menstruation and fertility. 

The specific problem we're solving is menstrual tracking for the +300M women in emerging market-countries who don’t have access to mobile internet (GSMA study). Adolescents particularly are amongst those who are least likely to have access to smartphones, and are at high risk of dropping out of school because of issues related to their menstrual cycle. There are currently no smart devices which don't require connectivity to an app to track your menstrual cycle available. The existing non-smart devices are also not appealing enough, especially to adolescents. As well as this, they require the user to do something everyday meaning huge behaviour change is needed.

We’re creating the first digital menstrual cycle tracking watch that requires no charging or connectivity to an app or smartphone. The technology we’re using is drawing from basic tracking tools and we’ve written unique algorithms to allow the watch to learn each individual users’ cycle and then tailor notifications to them. These get smarter over time as the user enters more data. 

The user simply presses a designated button on Day 1 of each period and from this, the watch will begin to learn your average cycle length and tailor the icon notifications accordingly. Our watch uses no language, only numbers and icons. It’s low-cost and it runs off a 3V lithium battery.

We hope to develop a bluetooth version connected to a bluetooth hub at the office / school, where we will be able to do even more - send tailored notifications if there are unusual patterns, collect data, provide a menstrual history for the user without her having to worry about updating another app or privacy - whilst still requiring no charging or connectivity to an individual app.

Our assumption is that our solution can serve women at different stages of their life. For our pilot, we are engaging with organisations who work with young women aged 15-18. These organisations will integrate the watch into their existing MHM programmes. We also believe that this can be a useful family planning tool for married couples. FSG's Advancing Gender Equity by Improving Menstrual Health, showed “period tracking apps, like Flo, are among the top 10 most-downloaded health apps in Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana” so we know there is demand. 

We are adopting a B2B model partnering with organisations who work with women and girls. We are involving them at every stage of the process - from the design to research questions on our expected outcomes. 

The watch will serve as an education tool allowing young women to know about their unique cycles - whether it’s regular / irregular, when to pack her menstrual hygiene products, understanding her moods. An at risk group is teenagers who are sexually active because of the cultural taboos they often can’t take chemical contraceptives so equipping them with a watch that looks good and provides them with key knowledge will serve as a vital tool.

Menstruation is a huge barrier for many women to attend school and work. By providing girls with a tool to learn about their periods, we can begin to dismantle this barrier and increase their participation in education, learning and the workforce. 

By partnering with organisations who focus on keeping girls in school by providing menstrual hygiene products, and adding our watch to these kits, girls can have everything they need to decrease the likelihood of dropping out due to menstruation or unwanted pregnancy.

This will be the first digital menstrual cycle tracking watch that requires no charging or connection to an app. Having only 1 data entry point (Day 1 of each period) is completely new, and entering data on the watch itself without needing an app is also a unique feature. 

In the period tracking space, there are a lot of successful products, however none fit for our market as they are too expensive or require an app. There are multiple apps with over 100M monthly users, most smart watches have a popular cycle tracking feature and Apple have recently integrated menstrual cycle tracking fully into the Apple Watch itself so now you can enter the data on the watch itself rather than in the app. This goes towards validating a key assumption of ours that users want convenience. 

For our target market, Cyclebeads and Smartcycle are two plastic necklaces that have a dial which the user moves each day. They’re low cost however clunky and not smart, but they show the demand for this type of product as Smartcycle has recently received funding to distribute over 34k in Mozambique alone and Cyclebeads sold over 2.5M to Global Health Foundations.

 The technology we’re using draws on basic tracking tools and we’ve written unique algorithms to allow the watch to learn each individual users’ cycle and then tailor notifications to them. These get smarter over time as the user enters more data. Having only 1 data entry point (Day 1 of each period) is completely new, and entering data on the watch itself without needing an app is also a unique feature.

For our prototypes, we are adapting existing digital watches by taking them apart, and re-programming them to suit our functionalities. We’re uploading our unique software and will then test. We know this technology works because we have already created a large prototype (not in wrist watch form factor) and also because digital watches can track the date and have stopwatch / alarm functionalities which is the basis of our tech.

We haven't developed a full theory of change yet as we are pre-pilot stage, however our assumptions are that linking our watch with the rest of the products that girls need to manage their menstrual cycles will lead to an increase in confidence, and can positively impact their attendance at school. 

We're adopting a B2B model so that we can partner with experts who are based on the ground and can provide this education and the other interventions that are needed, rather then repeating these activities ourselves. This approach also allows for us to scale quickly.  

Currently - 0 

August 2020 - we will have our first 5 watch prototypes

November 2020 - we will have a further 20 prototypes which have been iterated based on V1. We will test these with a wider group

Yr 1 (2021): 1,000 - we have already raised funds to test 500 watches with women from 4 NGO partners. We expect to test with another 500 at least in year 1.  

Yr 5 (2026): 2M - this is a conservative estimate of the number of women we’ll be reaching by selling the watches to philanthropic / non-profit partners who will be distributing it to women they work with, and through selling the watch to commercial retailers in emerging markets. 

Yr 1:

• Product

  • First 1,000 of The Essential version manufactured

• Pilot

• • With 4 organisations including UNFPA (contract pending)

  • Gather initial impact data 

• Partnerships

  • UK commercial retailer (already had interest from a potential buyer) - start with small order

• Community

  • • Ability to link with experts / other resources / brands / platforms for more info and products 

Yr 2-3:

• Product 

  • Prototype Bluetooth version

  • feedback loops for product dev and M&E in place (perhaps some kind of quarterly virtual conference with all partners)

• Customers

  • Philanthropic buyers increase 

  • Kasha and other ecommerce platforms in emerging markets (Eastern Europe)

  • Menstrual hygiene product partnerships to provide ‘full kit’ 
    

• Internal / Team growth

  • Need sales managers to scale (likely to be in-country reps who get commission on each deal)

• Community

  • Big marketing pushes and online community grows to increase orders from commercial retaiers

  • Campaign focused on ‘knowing your day’  

Yr 4-5:

• Product

  • Bluetooth version in production

  • Partnerships with brands for different watch straps / designs 

  • Different product offering (e.g. bangle) depending on cultural contexts 

  • Data management systems in place

• Customers

  • Philanthropic buyers increase

  • Expand into US (through existing UK retailer who have US branch)

  • More markets in Emerging economies (perhaps LatAm?)

• Partnerships

  • Strategic partnerships to shift more units by adding our watch to existing products / packages

• Data

  • Begin collating data from Bluetooth hubs 

• Community

  • Campaign focused on ‘equality / inclusivity’

  • Online community ramped up - potential to build an app or closed community on website with original content to engage users and a freemium model 

Product - COVID-19 has affected manufacturing so if we have to create unique tooling then we will be slowed down by 3 months. However, we’re going down a route where we hope this not to be the case (by using existing off-the-shelf watch casing and firmware). It would also create a financial barrier as we would need an extra $3-7k to make the moulds. 

Market entry - we will only go into a new market with a strong partner so finding this partner maye be a barrier in some cases. 

Financial - depending on how many education / community campaigns we need to run ourselves (as opposed to through partnerships), this will increase our costs

Product - exploring off-the-shelf resources first before considering making anything unique

Market Entry - already building relationships with ecommerce stores as well as market leaders such as PSI and existing organisations who focus on MHM.

Financial - we have already won a grant to prototype and successfully crowdfunded for our product. We believe that raising funds after we have done our pilot will be possible, and we can also start by launching another round of crowdfunding / pre-sales at this stage too. 

2 co-founders 

1 design house production company (full time until September)

Sarah Cottee, Founder & CEO, spent 8 years working in Asia within corporate and private philanthropic foundations. Her focus was managing investments ranging from US$100-500k in non-profits and social enterprises targeting women and youth in extremely marginalised communities. She went on to manage a US$800,000 Global Awards program to find and fund 8 NGOs and Social Enterprises working towards SDG8. Sarah spent a year in Manila, Philippines working in the slum community where she saw first-hand the effect that no menstrual tracking tools had on the women, girls, their families and ultimately their future. Sarah’s grandma was a midwife and an early pioneer in researching natural family planning and fertility - we’re using the methodology she taught and incorporating tech to allow for scale.  

Tania, Co-founder and CTO, was one of the first employees at Metta and Entrepreneur First Hong Kong. Professionally trained as a software engineer at HKUST, she has won multiple hackathons and came in second place in Microsoft Hong Kong’s Imagine Cup in 2017. Tania is also recently recognised as one of Google’s Women Techmaker Scholar in APAC in 2019. Prior to immi she worked as a software engineer in an IoT security startup in the Bay Area, and was selected to be in Entrepreneur First Hong Kong’s second cohort as the youngest founder to found her own women’s health company.

Embedism for prototyping

UNFPA - contract pending for piloting with 3 of their country offices (where we provide them with 300 watches free of charge and they use our reporting guidelines to gather data over a 3-6 month period)

We partner with the following organisations to integrating immi watch into their current programmes on MHM and SRHR to pilot the watch from March 2021 for 6 months and gain initial insight on a larger scale. 

• Roots of Health, Philippines 
• Teen’s Key, Hong Kong
• The Girls Foundation of Tanzania 
• Reach, Vietnam 

We’re adopting a B2B model so we can reach scale quickly. Our focus on creating strong partnerships is key in order to move fast and achieve market dominance. Our pricing strategy is a subsidised model for Global Health Foundations, and full price for commercial retailers. We're focused on Philanthropic channel first, however we've also started conversations with 2 commercial retailers who are interested in stocking the watch.

There are over 190 organisations globally who work on female health issues reaching millions of women combined. In the past 3 years, over $5bn has been spent on this issue by Global Health Foundations and there is currently no smart-product fit for advancing reproductive and menstrual health knowledge suitable for women in emerging markets 

To date we have spent no money on marketing and we already have 6 partner organisations on board who together work with over 3M women. This also shows how much demand there is. Going forward, we will be putting our resources into building up our brand to promote the benefits of cycle tracking, and also to ensure that we win contracts from the Global Health Foundations who will be buying our watches. 

Our revenue model is subsidised for global health foundations. We will charge 1.5x unit cost to Global Health Foundations and 2-3x unit cost to commercial retailers. Our target unit cost is $8-10 and our RRP is $30-50. 

On the philanthropic side, the Payer and the User are different. The Payer is the Global Health Foundation who buys the watch at around $15. They will then distribute the watch to the non-profit organisations they work with for free. The Non-Profit organisations then distribute the watch to the women in their communities. 

We will be applying for grants jointly with non-profit partners to include the watch in the MHM / SRHS programmes as well as, in some cases, being written into existing grant budgets for these programmes. 

By keeping our unit cost below $10 we can ensure we’re affordable in our philanthropic channel and also make enough of a margin on our commercial sales. The interest we’ve had from the UK retailer was a pleasant surprise, and an ecommerce store in East Africa is interested too, so we will to pursue this market post-pilot to ensure financial sustainability. 

Publicity + access to funding - we beleve that being part of this network could open many doors for us and lead to huge impact for women and girls in emerging markets. 

Partnerships with other solvers and those in your network as potential buyers / users - many of the existing Solvers work with our target market, so we can partner with them and provide them with watches to give to the women and girls they work with. 

Expert support in mentoring - we could hugely benefit from the expert knowledge and experience that you've had from seeing and coaching so many start-ups through this process

Product / Service distribution - this would be in the form of the existing Solvers and philanthropic health organisations that you have in your network

Monitoring and Evaluation - our watch has the potential to impcat many aspects of a womans life. We would need guidance and support on how best to conduct RCT's and studies to measure this impact.

Media / Exposure - to attract more partnerships and distribute more watches

MIT network of global funders + experts

Solve members:

Raaji - add watch to their teaching resources

DoctHers - provide watches to patients

Saathi - add watch to products they provide

Khushi Baby - add more data from the watches to their health records

Laboratoria - market watch to these women

Our product, mission and team is all focused on elevating women and dismantling the gender barriers that have come about from menstruation. With this money, we would be able to move much quicker in order to provide more watches to more non-profit organisations free of charge or at a very small fee, and we would be able to conduct more in-depth research studies to prove the efficacy and understand how the watch can be best utilised (e.g. with what age group, with what other support / products). This would mean that we can scale quicker and achieve impact quicker as we would be conducting rigorous testing early on.

By empowering women with personalised knowledge of their menstrual cycle not only can we impact their lives, but that of their families, communities and society at large. The simplicity of our solution makes it easily scalable and profitable with investment like this. We would be able to run campaigns to penetrate new markets and achieve dominance very quickly. 

We would also be able to pilot our bluetooth version which has the ability to collect data. This can lead to huge advancements in female health.