Early this September, I boarded a four-hour flight to the city of Bangalore in India, to attend the Marriott x TED Salon’s newest panel within Asia-Pacific, called ‘Women in Innovation’.
It couldn’t have been a better-curated panel of speakers: there was Zubaida Bai from India (founder of ‘ayzh’ and women’s health advocate); Asha De Vos from Sri Lanka (marine biologist pioneering blue whale research in the North Indian Ocean); and Trang Tran from Vietnam (social entrepreneur and founder of Fargreen).
Different fields of interest; different women hailing from different corners of APAC; very stimulating discussions.
Held at the Bengaluru Marriott Hotel Whitefield, this marks the second year of Marriott’s partnership with TED. Previous editions include their APAC series last year in Bangkok, with upcoming similar TED Salons in Vancouver, Boston, Cairo, and Athens this year. And Bangalore, often touted as the Silicon Valley of India and the hub of innovation and progressive ideas in the country, was certainly the ripe place for this discussion.
I got the opportunity to speak with Zubaida Bai, founder and CEO of ayzh (pronounced “eyes”), a social enterprise that designs products to improve women’s health across their reproductive lives.
Zubaida is a testimony to how having women at the helm of organisations influencing women’s health can translate to effective results. And Ayzh is the perfect illustration of how the simplest ideas are sometimes the most potent.
Her flagship product at ayzh was ‘janma’, a Clean Birth Kit which costs USD3, that comes designed in pink biodegradable jute bag – which the mothers can, and often do, reuse as a purse. Since first launching in 2012, ayzh has now expanded their products to include kits addressing needs for newborn health, postpartum health, and menstrual health, and expanded across India and also Africa.
I remember first learning about you and your work, through your flagship product ‘janma’, the clean birth kit. And I thought: what a simple, but effective idea. Talk us through that ‘a-ha’ moment that led to the birth of, well, your birth kit.
I was travelling and meeting women’s health organisations and randomly met a midwife through the trip, who was using agricultural tools to give birth to babies. I think that was pretty much my ‘a-ha’ moment – I don’t think I’d decided until months after with what I had wanted to do with what I had seen. I just that I knew I had wanted to do something about what I’d seen. But it was basically a moment where I just knew something was wrong with the system, and it needed to be fixed.
Full story on Marie France Asia: https://www.mariefranceasia.com/health/medical-news/womens-health/marriott-x-ted-salon-meet-zubaida-bai-advocate-womens-health-india-developing-world-325671.html
Sarah Khan 
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