WoW Woman in FemTech | Aagya Mathur, co-founder and CEO of Aavia
Interview by Marija Butkovic @MarijaButkovic
From starting a volunteer service to fill a community need in high school and founding a small business to provide affordable transportation to her undergraduate classmates, to now leading Aavia to improve women’s health and wellness, Aagya Mathur is consistently bridging gaps and solving inefficiencies. Through personal and professional experiences, she found her passion at the intersection of healthcare, innovation, and analytics-driven insights. During her consulting career, she worked with various clients to improve patient experience and medication adherence. However, she found she needed to be closer to the end-user to have the kind of impact she knew she could have.
The Aavia team works with women at each step of development to rapidly prototype a solution that empowers women to take their birth control pill on time, every time. Aavia’s pocket-sized smart device contains patent-pending sensor technology that recognizes the count and position of pills in her original pack and sends notifications to the user's phone until she actually takes it.
What is the idea behind your project / product and how did you come up with it?
This is personal. Birth control is personal. Roughly half of humankind is female and in the US most go through a phase in life when they are actively trying to avoid getting pregnant. The Pill is twice as popular as any other form of contraception in the US, yet over 1M women in the US have unintended pregnancies each year from inconsistent use of the Pill. The Pill has to be taken every day at the same time for it to be effective, but we live in a fast paced world with numerous distractions and we heard from many women that the Pill experience was stressful, a nightmare, or always on their mind. So we set out to solve that! (and more! Coming soon :) )
When did all start and do you have other members in your team?
My brilliant co-founders, Aya Suzuki and Alexis Wong, and I met early 2017 and worked full-time that summer. Aya completed her BS in mechanical engineering and I completed my MBA, both from MIT, and then we joined Alexis full-time summer 2018.
How long did it take you to be where you are now?
Within a year with less than $50,000 of non-dilutive funds, we had our first prototypes and customers. We’re now almost 2.5 years in and on the third generation of the smart case, a pre-seed round of funding behind us, 2 full-time employees, and the most dedicated group of Aavia Insiders who are actively helping us design the Aavia experience.
What was the biggest obstacle?
To start, whenever I search “FemTech [fill in the blank]”, Google suggests, “Did you mean: edtech [fill in the blank].” That’s a concise illustration of the biggest obstacle — even Google doesn’t recognize FemTech as a category. Further, the most common question that I get asked, typically by men, “Is this really a problem?” Many women have been more or less trained to not speak about their bodies and needs, which makes it more difficult for all people to understand and share the different pain points they face. At Aavia, we are blessed to have a devoted team of Aavia Insiders who candidly share their pain points with the birth control pill and women’s health in general.
This disconnect further deepens with the common perception that most women’s health companies are the same, or very similar, when really most are tackling immensely different pain points. Improving the experience of breast pumping is very different from improving the experience of menopause, which is very different from improving the experience of starting your period for the first time. They occur during vastly different periods of your life.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
Having a positive impact on Aavia Insiders! On average, they report 57% decrease in stress around the Pill after using Aavia.
What are the challenges of being an entrepreneur in the niche you are in? How about being a female founder / entrepreneur?
The challenges remain similar to what most women speak about and those I listed above, and I focus on what I can do to mitigate them. Step One: surrounding myself with a talented team and amazing advisors, and Step Two: having conviction in what I’m building. Also, I did a study on raising as a first-time female founder and would be happy to share learnings.
What are your projects you are currently working on?
Aavia! Building an early stage startup quickly and sustainably to support menstruators everywhere!
Is #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why?
Yes, but also women in STEM in general, women in business, women in finance, and women in every field are all important. There are several reasons, but to highlight two: 1) to serve as role models for the women in future generations. Seeing someone in a position of power who looks like you helps ingrain that you can do it, too. For example, the US women’s national soccer team has inspired many young girls; and 2) so they can design and develop products, services, research, etc. for women’s needs! We know where our pain points, needs, and wants have not been met and we can change that. Aside from gender, diversity in tech is critical for all these same reasons.
What is the most important piece of advice you can give to all female founders and female entrepreneurs out there?
Whether a female or not, listen to your end user! The core of what we do at Aavia revolves around human-centered design and that’s how we plan our development. This is how you ensure that you develop a solution that your users both need and want, and you gain conviction that what you’re building has legs, no matter what someone else says.
What will be the key trends in the health tech and fem tech industry in the next 5 years and where do you see it heading?
Historically clinical trials and other medical research have been predominantly conducted on and by men, in fact, over 80% of medical research has been conducted on males (including male mice :)). This has resulted in fluctuating hormones and potential pregnancies being neglected. These biological events weren’t considered in the development of health services, many times intentionally. Given women are half the population, this means there is an incredible gap in health data, putting women at risk since they still are being prescribed the same medications and therapies as men, that do not take into account their bodily differences, and in particular, their hormonal cycles. Hormones fluctuating is normal and part of being a female; it’s imperative that these differences are considered, and thankfully now more work is being done to care for female bodies. Take Bloomertech for example: Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women worldwide but most research has been conducted on men, so this startup developed a bra that monitors heart health and potential early detection of precursor abnormalities. Even more so though, they are collecting the data that is missing on women’s heart health, which will enable them to also eliminate gender bias from machine learning and AI in healthcare. Femtech is becoming prevalent in digital health and healthcare in general because our voices are being heard and we’re (mostly) taking it into our own hands to ensure our bodies are understood.
While FemTech is necessary to bring light to the unmet needs in space, in five years it will become more normalized and just then will be referred to as tech.
Incumbents / big players will start to invest more of their resources in this prominent l area as they will continue to be outpaced by the numerous startups.
Who are your 3 inspirational women in health tech and fem tech?
Halle Tecco (Rock Health & Natalist), Melissa Hanna (Mahmee), and I’m going to throw in a curve ball, Eric Dy who started Bloomlife — as he uses a very user-centric and scientific approach and his company is inspired by his shared experience with his wife.
Website: https://aavia.io/
Facebook & LinkedIn: Aagya Mathur, Aavia
Instagram & Twitter: Aagya320
Instagram: Aavia.io
Twitter: Aavia_io
This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship and diversity. Visit marijabutkovic.co.uk or follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic.