Cambridge Judge Business School: Social Entrepreneur Empowering Women Through Sanitation
As sanitation for women continues to be a hotly debated topic around the world, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School is looking to make an impact on medicine and global health through women sanitation. Jennifer Jia, who is currently pursuing her PhD in Clinical Neurosciences at Girton College in 2017 as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, is working on a project that could bring low-cost sanitary pads to women worldwide. The pads, which are made of recycled fast fashion clothes, could cost as little as one pence each through the Emporsand startup venture.
“I think affordable sanitary pads are a basic human need, especially in countries like India or Bangladesh, where this is out of reach for a lot of women and as a result they are excluded from social activities,” says Jennifer for the need of cheap options for sanitation pads.
Emporsand Startup Venture
Emporsand was founded by Jia after she mentored an undergraduate team that came up with the sanitary pad idea to win the Engineering Collaboration Challenge at the Global Grand Challenges Summit, organized by the Royal Academy of Engineering in London.
Jennifer pitched the idea to the EnterpriseTECH Star to take the concept forward. EnterpriseTECH Star is a programme designed and lead by Dr. Rebecca Myers to help 20 EnterpriseTECH graduates accelerate their early-stage startups. Jennifer then pitched the idea at the House of Commons to the UK Business Start Up Competition, which is sponsored by the SJL Foundation and was awarded a grant of £2,000.
“Jennifer’s product will help reduce carbon emissions from the production and distribution of fast fashion, one of the world’s biggest contributors to carbon emissions, and provides affordable sanitary care products for potentially half a billion females in the world,” says Simon Lancaster, founder of the SJL Foundation.
Emporsand plans to market the product in India, though there are no timelines available on that just yet. Their strategy includes sourcing raw materials from clothing and use that to manufacture their products after launching a crowdfunding campaign within the next six months.
Jennifer’s mentor at the EnterpriseTECH Star program was Tom Britton, a Cambridge MBA graduate and co-founder of the investment firm SyndicateRoom. Talking about Jennifer, he says:
“Jennifer is an incredibly driven entrepreneur whose passion and ingenuity have led her to design a product that is not only good for the environment, being made from recycled materials, but has an additional social impact by dramatically reducing the costs of sanitary pads to a level that is affordable by nearly all.”
Social Entrepreneurship at Indian Universities – Sanitation Solutions
Closer home, social entrepreneurship has increasingly been a focus among college and university students. For instance, the Enactus Club from Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies led a similar focus as Jennifer Jia, which won them national and international plaudits. Enactus, or Entrepreneurial Action through Us, is an international not-for-profit organisation that works with university students and business leaders to improve the quality of lives of people through various outreach programs.
Enactus SSCBS’s 2014 contingent competed in and won the Enactus India National Competition with a focus on three projects, including Sanitation Solutions. As part of this project, the group conducted awareness camps in slums and villages, identifying entrepreneurs who led projects in their respective villages. The project linked entrepreneurial women with manufacturers of low-cost sanitary napkins to ensure the outreach of Sanitation Solutions. The profit margin allowed the women to become financially independent.
