SBC102 case – Social Business Creation

If you empower women, it benefits everybody

June 15th, 2023

By: Sororas’ Team

Do women daily significantly impact the business world? In Mexico, women have protested against gender-based violence, inequality, sexism, and the lack of support for their human rights for 24 hours in the past few years. How did they plan to do it? Feminist communities and groups agreed on not showing up to their work, schools, their everyday activities, on social media on March 9th, intentionally being a day after International Women’s Day, which they called “A day without them (referring to women)” with of the objective of bringing visualization to women’s inputs in the society, which would show the economical and social impact it would cause without their paid and unpaid work. According to BBVA bank, the estimated economic impact of this protest could be up to 34,571 million Mexican pesos (approx. 268,651,240,999 CAD): of which 23,200 million Mexican pesos belong to paid economic activities and 11,371 million Mexican pesos for non-paid work for home and care duties [1]. Without even making the conversion, it is notorious that unpaid related work represents almost half of paid work, which seems pretty alarming and unfair, but the right is women do have a significant impact on a country’s economy. And all of this happens, even having the glass ceiling on top of their heads, which refers to the invisible barrier women and other group minorities encounter when trying to escalate in male-dominated fields and corporations, which impedes the rapid and sustained growth of women in the professional ambit, and sometimes even completely stall it.

And the business world is no exception. According to the World Economic Forum in 2019, for every dollar a man gets paid, a woman, on average, only gets paid 54 cents[2]. While the United Nations estimated that only 43% of women would have a job in 2021[3]. In entrepreneurship, the same phenomenon happens. In 2017, all-men teams attracted nearly 80% of the capital, while companies founded by all women received only 2% of funding.

The big question is, what would happen to women’s performance if they lived in a more equitable environment? Would it be the same, better, or without a notorious improvement? According to the McKinsey Global Institute, advancing women’s equality could add $12 trillion to the global economy by 2025. In a best-case scenario, that number could jump to $28 trillion dollars. “This impact is roughly equivalent to the size of the combined Chinese and US economies today” [2].

I believe that [Ada] Growth company found this business opportunity knowing that women are in a less privileged position in the business world, but in reality, with their key skills like team working, innovation, and problem-solving in a more equitable environment, could really be a gamer changer to the world, so it decided to combine female empowerment with lifelong learning and rely on the microlearning approach. Its value proposition is: [Ada ] provides women with tools to make their own strengths visible.

The Ada App is a microlearning app that provides daily 2-minute short videos, mini quizzes, action items, and summaries that lead to long-term behavioral changes in the workplace. It also contains a digital mentor that can provide dynamic coaching in the spirit of the Ada App library of content, so that Ada App users have access to casual lessons when they have a few minutes a day as well as immediate feedback for any upcoming situation and the possibility to watch the videos when the users decide when and where they want to watch them. It focuses on gamification and offers insight into one’s own performance and progress. It offers an individual weekly plan that adapts to the needs of each woman.

[Ada] provides tools that empower women to be seen and heard. It intends to affect organizational transformation via female empowerment. The latest data shows that providing clear growth opportunities, personal development opportunities, and a diverse environment are ways to increase female recruitment, female growth, and female retention. It is recommended that every woman in an organization has access to [Ada].

[Ada] uses the lifelong learning approach, which means that personal development is ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated. “We strive to create an experience that women want to use, are motivated to take action after using, and are interested in continuing to use as they see it working for them”. Following the principle of lifelong learning, it is suggested the use of the [Ada] App for at least a year in order to see a great impact.

While it is intended for [Ada] to affect organizational transformation via female empowerment, they are glad to offer the tools in the [Ada] App to anyone who wants to try them. “We do think that the men in the organization would benefit from understanding the scenarios and challenges that women face in being seen and heard as well as the tools that can be used to overcome them”.

The [Ada] App works on the latest versions of Apple iOS and Android phones.

The app is offered in 3 payment plans depending on the team size:

Figure 1. Plans and prices of the [Ada] app [4]

It specifies “Tell us the number of women in your company and use [Ada] Premium to make the strengths of each woman visible.”

[4]

Its business model is characterized by:

Personalization: considering the needs and desires of every woman that has access to the learning platform to truly understand their starting point and goals in order to program its lessons accordingly. The company is highly empathic.
User design: considering that on average women daily spend 8 hours doing paid and unpaid duties, offering quick and efficient videos makes it a comfortable and suitable way to ensure women will be able to watch them and learn their daily lessons. Additionally, by always being at hand, it makes it even more comfortable since she does not need to take out the laptop and stay sitting for hours because probably she has other responsibilities to take care of [5].
Sustainability: it covers the fifth sustainable development goal since it wants to achieve gender equality and empower women by fulfilling the indicator related to the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women. And all of this is achieved while being an auto-sufficient company.
Innovation: there is no other company that unites fast learning with the empowerment of women while being a profitable business and even less one to empower women that are part of a company or entrepreneurship, so they can achieve better results and have the conviction to happily stay in it.
Experience focused: since it wants to strive to create an experience that women want to use, are motivated to take action after using, and are interested in continuing to use as they see it working for them, they are assuring a good clients engagement to maintain a strong relationship with the customers, having daily contact.
Measurement: Taking into account the learning methodology, they know that users must stay at least 1 year on track to see results, by having this long-term metric they are generating customer loyalty and attraction, besides it helps them monitor the outcomes and make data-driven decisions to optimize their social impact.
Availability: The app is available to download on both operating systems iOS and Android. Also, by offering plans according to the number of users, it widens its scope, allows a big scalation, and provides a better user experience by taking into account each group’s focus and goals.
Team diversity: As an app project, the team is formed by a customer success program specialist, business development specialist, digital marketing, graphic designer, and the founders. By having a diverse digital-focused team, the app accomplished to have this social and sustainable impact.
Profitability: [Ada] Growth has raised a total of €1.1M in funding over 2 Their latest funding was raised on April 25, 2023, from a Pre-Seed round. [Ada] Growth is funded by 3 investors. Hansmen Group and Calm/Storm Ventures are the most recent investors [6].

These characteristics of the [ADA] Growth Company’s business model, are what successful and impactful companies have in common. It is a big example from which many companies and entrepreneurs can learn.

[ADA] Growth Company is a clear example of the impact women can have in the business world when given the chance. Today, more than ever, women must be and feel empowered to be a game changer in the world. Because it is almost guaranteed success, growth, and improvement wherever women are.

References

[1] Salgado, G. Jr. C., Espinosa, L. A., Ng, J. J. L., & Serrano, C. (2020, March 6). México: Efectos en la actividad económica de “Un día sin nosotras.” BBVA Research. https://www.bbvaresearch.com/publicaciones/mexico-efectos-en-la-actividad-economica-de-un-dia-sin-nosotras/#:~:text=El%20impacto%20econ%C3%B3mico%20de%20%E2%80%9CUn,labores%20dom%C3%A9sticas%20y%20de%20cuidados.

[2] Rafi, T. (2022, April 14). Council Post: Why women entrepreneurs are critical to economic growth. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2020/05/18/why-women-entrepreneurs-are-critical-to-economic-growth/?sh=150b20c44523

[3] United Nations. (n.d.). La Pandemia Aumenta la desigualdad entre géneros: En 2021 Sólo el 43% de las mujeres tendrá trabajo | noticias onu. United Nations. https://news.un.org/es/story/2021/07/1494512

[4] ADA Growth. [Ada] – Growth. (2023a, May 4). https://adaapp.com/en/#

[5] Las Labores del Hogar son trabajo. (n.d.). https://imco.org.mx/las-labores-del-hogar-son-trabajo/#:~:text=Las%20mujeres%20dedican%2040%20horas,billones%20de%20pesos%20en%202021.

[6] Ada Growth – funding, financials, valuation & investors. Crunchbase. (n.d.). https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ada-growth/company_financials