Mamma: The dedicated app for women going throught their motherhood journey

Mamma is a female booking app start-up which provides access to the best local and virtual support services for women; aimed at assisting them during all stages of their motherhood journey.

We speak with founder, Grace Raia all about the app and their crowd funding.

Can you tell me about your company?

My background is in finance, so when I moved to London, I started to work in an investment bank. When I got pregnant, I decide to quit. I then slowly had this idea about the app, which I then made it real thing after 6 months of thinking about it! Eventually after a lot of work, in February 2020, we launched in London.

When the idea of the Mamma app started, I engaged one of my friends, Pegah so we became co-founders of the business. We have engaged a developer and tried to select partner to be part of the business. We have already launched in London, and in October we managed to launch in Milan! What we want to do, is to expand globally, but we are currently present in two markets.

What is Mamma?

It’s a female-led booking app dedicated to women who are going through their motherhood journey. This includes the conception journey, so, everything to do with fertility and pregnancy. From post-partum onwards, we have tried to put 360 degrees of useful services, products and treatments that you can then find all on one platform alone.

When I was pregnant, I found it very difficult to find the right answers and right people in one place. I had to spend hours and hours navigating the web, or reading books, or calling friends up to ask about their experiences. But each of us is different and we all have our very own personal experience. So, it was very hard for me to find the answers. I didn’t think it was fair that a woman should go through this during what is a beautiful, but very challenging experience. You can feel very alone, you can experience depression, many things can happen during the journey.

How the idea began

Developing the idea

The idea was born from my story, and my friend’s stories. We made it alone, during a pandemic, and Brexit, which was very challenging! We’re now at the point where we need help to grow and to take the business to another level. We want to build a team, and create interaction internally within the application, to make it the only platform you need on your device. It will be a must-have tool!

When I challenged myself with this journey, I knew it’s always a risk, to leave your job and open your own business. I felt almost responsible to help and support women during these stages of their life.

There are plenty of associations, communities and apps, where you can get a little bit of everything; but there is no such platform yet, that includes everything in one place alone.

80% of the services on the app can be done remotely because of the pandemic. We have learned slowly that you can actually gain a lot of the support from the comfort of your own home. This helps it expand to the whole country, it’s not limited to just London and Milan, it can be the whole of the UK and Italy.

It is different getting support remotely, but after last year, people have learned how to do this, and it works. There are of course things like Gynaecologists and acupuncture who can’t work remotely. But we have legal support and maternity nurses who can help even over the phone. We have sleep consultants, nutritionists, fitness programmes you can do from home. Everything, you name it, we have it!

For pregnancy, we have type of support you might need during the nine months until the birth, and then from the birth we have professionals who can really help you. This can be help with breastfeeding, or formular feeding; psychologists for post-partum depression; life coach, fitness and wellness in general To give yourself self-love and self-care that is not superficial, it’s very important!

Growing the app

We are always growing as well and asking around to get more experts within the platform. It’s still a work in progress, but we have just launched a crowd funding page as we are trying to raise a certain amount of money for us to be able to grow.

The funds will be used to hire a team, a developer to work internally with us and to make the interaction inside the app. This would include a fertility and period tracker that everyone can use and a baby growth monitor during pregnancy. The funds will also help with the marketing and advertising campaigns which is the most important, without it, you go nowhere!

We love to get feedback from people and any ideas or new things that we can add that is useful to people. Even free content from interviews that the experts have done with digital magazines, we will include everything.

We want to expand globally. This is an application that can work in all cities all over the world. From the US, to Portugal and Paris. Even in Dubai there is the market and the need for something like this.

The learning process

What have been the main challenges so far?

When you have never owned a business, its all a learning process. If I think about where I am now and I could go back, I would do some things differently. I know now that I have the knowledge, how a business works, how to create a proper business plan. Who do you need behind you, to help you and support you? Specific roles, like legal and accounting. These are people who understand the concept and even though they don’t work inside the business, it’s very important to us that everyone who works with the business, understands the concept.

Most of the people who work behind us are women. Its literally female-led. All the experts in the app are 99% women, we do have a male physio in London, and one in Milan; but the rest are all women.

We want to give the opportunity to our experts as well, to get more visibility, more clients, so for us this is a very important topic of female owned, digital start ups. It’s definitely something people like to hear, but its not easy. Even though we are in 2021, and things are changing slowly, it’s usually much easier for a man to grow and be successful in the business environment. But hopefully we are going to get there, and we will find someone who believes in us and wants to invest and so we can grow.

Raising funds

How is the crowdfunding going?

We launched a week ago, its very common, a lot of start ups use crowd funding. It’s definitely beneficial, because even if people don’t donate, you’re still talking about Mamma! We have raised some money already, but we still have more to raise. We’re working hard to get the word out there and to ask for support from everybody!

We’re trying to raise £350 thousand pounds, and anyone can donate from as little as £5. There is also the opportunity for 4 people to donate £50,000 in exchange for 5% equity in the business. This is an opportunity for people who invest in new tech start-ups. This would be best suited to a company who really understands us as a concept, and where we want to get to.

The future of Mamma

The funds we are trying to get are for a one-year project. We will then see how it goes, if it will pay for itself, or if we have to go for more investment. I would like that from now to 2023, for us to be present in at least 2 or 3 more countries.

We would also like to collaborate with public health, so the NHS in the UK and the public health in Italy. This would be to use Mamma to cover the gaps in between the public and the private sector. And then for as many downloads of the app as possible.

Anyone can download it, for example something like the period tracker, can be used from a teenager and above.

Legal advice and support

Supporting the LGBTQ community

The legal part in Italy gives support to gay couples as well to help them to become parents. This is something we want to include in London as well, but it’s a bit more difficult to find the experts which has been a bit more challenging, but we are going to get there! In Italy, we have legal support and options for when you’re trying to conceive, including adoption or IVF. It really helps you to understand what your options are, rather than to give up and not become a parent.