Divine intervention: How two Indian ladies are assisting mothers ‘thrive’ with tiny assistance from Apple

Aashika Chittiappa spent her academic years at premier institutions across India, Germany and the UK mainly focussed on small business management, and ultimately specialising in finance and advertising and marketing. She started her profession in finance at Ernst &amp Young and then moved into sports advertising and marketing with some of the world’s biggest sporting properties and brands. But when she became a mother for the very first time in 2015, and decided she — ultimately — required some break, she realised there had been just also quite a few gaps, also quite a few struggles in her expertise that she was not ready for. She wasn’t alone. Pretty considerably each and every mother she was in touch with was going trough the very same ups and downs. It was at this point she took a get in touch with not to return to a typical profession and get started Mamma-Miya.

It began as a modest WhatsApp group. In time, this tiny WhatsApp group turned into a seriously large Facebook group, purely organically, transforming into this seriously gorgeous, open space exactly where mothers would bring up all types of concerns and speak about them.

Chittiappa and her co-founder at the time, Sarah Chandy, would devote the next two years meeting and interviewing mothers from about the world, attempting to comprehend their issues and matching them with theirs and look for strategies to resolve them. They would also speak to mothers in their fifties and sixties, who seemed “sorted”, had fabulous careers whilst producing time for all the relationships that mattered to them, to comprehend what they had been undertaking to show up “so fully” in life.

It was all about bringing mindfulness and intention and setting specific targets and organizing your life improved — all this would sooner or later develop into the North Star for Mamma-Miya, an iOS app created “to support busy mothers to declutter their mind, stay organised and make room for what matters to them,” Chittiappa tells TheSpuzz Online.

The divine intervention

Until one day, Chandy left the corporation for individual motives and for a year and a half, “it almost felt like things were coming to a grinding halt,” since Chittiappa had no tech background whatsoever. It was tough to locate a replacement.

She place the job profile on a prominent web page that encourages ladies who have taken profession breaks to get started more than once more since she felt “you had to be a mother or completely empathise with her situation to build the right kind of a product, otherwise it would be purely theoretical.” After sifting by means of about a hundred CVs, she chanced upon iOS developer, Namrata Mayanil, and was “just blown away by the kind of experience that she had.”

It was not just about her expertise as an Apple veteran, but her worth technique and vision for the corporation — thinking about she herself is a mother of two children who are older than Chittiappa’s — that it felt pretty much like divine intervention that, had she not met her at that time, she didn’t know how considerably longer she would have been capable to hold that ship of Mamma-Miya on her personal. The co-founder synchronicity was incredible, and it was clear early on that with Mayanil on-board, “Mamma-Miya was on its way somewhere.”

Mamma-Miya’s exceptional proposition is that it is purely digital. It is easy and uncomplicated to use. It is correct at the cusp of productivity and wellbeing.

“We don’t want to be this place where mothers are spending an infinite amount of time, but we want to give them time back so they can use it for the things that matter to them,” Chittiappa says, adding “it’s really about bringing more purpose and peace to the lives of these mothers.”

Often, there are a lot of items that remain in their minds that bring about this loop, which endlessly runs and requires away a lot of their power and then “you tend to miss things, things tend to slip from the cracks.”

Mamma-Miya aids build a seamless bridge exactly where they can “just dump that thought and get it out and get moving in life” by means of a idea known as “brain dump” with out placing a schedule to it. Another idea known as “hats” lets mothers see their life by the distinctive hats they put on.

“As a mother, it’s very important for me to be able to balance my time and mind space and be able to do justice to all the different roles that I have.”

A stroke of magic

One fine day in 2020, even as the “two-mom team” was obtaining one of these discussions about item roadmap, Mayanil received an unlikely e-mail. Chittiappa calls it “a stroke of magic by the universe.” It was a mail from Apple.

The iPhone maker had seriously liked their work and wanted to connect to know how they could assistance enhance Mamma-Miya and take it to lots of other folks who would possibly want it. This would be element of Entrepreneur Camp, an Apple initiative to celebrate and encourage ladies founders and developers to create the “next generation of cutting-edge apps” by means of one-on-one code-level guidance, mentorship, and insights from best engineers and leaders. Selected teams also obtain one year of membership in the Apple Developer Program, assistance from an Apple Developer representative for at least one year, and access to the Apple Entrepreneur Camp alumni network in addition to getting invited to Cupertino for WWDC free of charge of expense (this is taking place practically this year in the wake of a international pandemic).

“If you look at the product we took to Apple and when you look at the product we have today, between the App Accelerator and the Entrepreneur Camp, it’s almost an unrecognisable product not just in terms of the tech piece, but even in terms of the packaging and the conceptualisation. It has evolved so beautifully after our association with Apple,” Chittiappa says.

One of the items that seriously moved her was a session by Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of atmosphere, policy and social initiatives. It was about generating more mindspace for the atmosphere in one’s every day lives, a thing that inspired them to consist of an “environment hat” in the app. A slew of other item demo sessions meanwhile helped articulate their what/ who/ why in below 3 minutes, a thing that is a lot easier mentioned than accomplished, according to Chittiappa.

Mayanil says finding in touch with design and style evangelists at Apple has helped bring high-quality and worth to the app in addition to what she calls “the Apple simplicity.” Together, they’ve brought Siri integration and iOS widgets to Mamma-Miya on iPhone and iPad even as work is on to implement machine understanding framework into it to make it more intelligent (in a pretty inclusive and helpful sense).

Some of the most fascinating discussions the group has had with Apple is about a new section known as “insights” that would assistance mothers “make better decisions in the future basis of how they are doing this in the present.” The feature is anticipated to be rolled out in the next couple of months.

“Without Apple’s handholding and inspiration through the whole process, I think we might never have been able to articulate and visualise it so beautifully.”

What’s exceptional — and inspiring — is that Mamma-Miya has grown “completely organically” so far with out any advertising and marketing devote whatsoever.

“We still have really small numbers but response has been consistent over the last few years and 80-85 percent of our users come from outside of India, predominantly from the US, followed by Australia, the UK and large parts of Europe.”

The co-founders are not concerned so considerably about the numbers even though. They are seriously focused on solving a issue — to assistance mothers thrive, rather than just survive all through their motherhood journey — and “growth will come when we completely nail the product market fit.”

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Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz