Jennifer Jia, Emporsand
HOW TO: BUILD A SOCIAL VENTURE
Listen here:iTunes | SoundCloud | Spotify | Stitcher. Subscribe on your favourite channel to get notified of the next episode!
“Our value statement is that if we can help any woman, we would. Any period tackled is a victory.”
#CUTalks by CUTEC has just launched a new mini-series: Female Founders in the Spotlight. This series has the aim of increasing visibility of female founders of early-stage startups. To launch the series, Shreya Singhal and Thomas Bohné have been talking to Jennifer Jia, founder of Emporsand, a company empowering women through access to sanitation as featured on the BBC. They are repurposing waste cuts of clothing into sanitary towels and making them accessible to women in poverty. We met Jennifer at the EnterpriseTECH and EnterpriseWOMEN at the Judge Business School. Jennifer speaks about the scale of the problem that Emporsand is tackling and the challenges that her company faces in developing a sustainable business model to solve this issue. She also highlights the need for investors and the public in general to appreciate that the lack of sanitation towels are not just problems for women but also the wider society.
This episode was sponsored by DesignSpark: design tools and resources for engineers to help make their ideas happen. The podcast was produced by Carl Homer, Cambridge TV.
Jump to the following topics:
How Jennifer started Emporsand - 1:30
Lack of Access to Sanitary Pads - 2:20
Thriving as a Social Venture in Cambridge - 4:00
Value Proposition Strategy for Developing Market like India - 7:00
Emporsand’s Business Model - 10:20
Gender Barrier in Seeking Investment - 12:40
Other Usages of Recycled Clothing - 15:20