What happens when you’ve been gaslit by the medical system for 10 years? This is what I explore in my conversation with Eshani Kaushal, ex corporate and tech lawyer turned entrepreneur, and the founder of Moodee — the GCC’s first period care and hormone health platform.
In this episode, Eshani shares:
- Why it took her over 10 years after being diagnosed with fibroids to have them properly dealt with
- What happened after she had emergency surgery to remove a 12 centimetre fibroid
- How a PCOS diagnosis increased her health anxiety
- How the idea for Moodee emerged and the leap of faith it took her to leave her corporate career
- What it’s like to run a femtech business in the UAE
- Why she thinks women’s health isn’t a luxury, but rather infrastructure that helps economies thrive
- How Moodee will bring access to clean, non-toxic science backed health and menstrual products for women across all ages and stages in the Middle East
- And of course, the story of her first period
Eshani says that women’s health isn’t a niche when we’re 50% of the world’s population. She says that when you fund women’s health, you enable women to do business
Thank you, Eshani!
Get in touch with Eshani:
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise Brothers: Thank you so much for coming onto the show today, Eshani. I’m really excited to speak to you to dive into a conversation about stigma and taboo. Let’s first start by getting into the question that I ask all of my guests, which is tell us the story of your very first period.
Eshani Kaushal: So my first period, I’ll never forget it because it was a very embarrassing moment for me. So I went to a school where you wore uniforms and on our sports days, our uniform was white and I had this white skirt on. White shirt, a blue blazer.
And I started my period and I started my periods really young. I was nine years old, so I hadn’t even, you know, attended the reproduction class where they introduced you to periods. And I guess my mom thought I was too young for her to have this conversation with me. It just hit me out of nowhere and I thought I was going to die.
And I remember sitting, it was lunch break, I was having lunch with my friends and I got up to go to the loo and my friend was like, oh my God. Your skirt is covered in blood. Are you bleeding? She thought I was bleeding from my leg, so we went to the bathroom.
I check and I’m bleed, like bleeding. It’s a lot of blood. And of course, as a child who’s, who has no idea, no clue about what’s happening, I really thought I was going to die. So they, my friends ran out, got a teacher, and the teacher came in and explained to me what a period is. And that what’s happening to me, you’re not going to die.
What’s happening to is very normal. It’s just that it’s very early for you for some reason, and introduced me to the pad and told me how to, place it. Gave a new pair of underwear, found somebody’s old skirt, and made me change. So it was a really traumatic experience and I was one of the first kids in my class who started her period.
And so I felt really out of place, really isolated. So my first period was actually not a very nice experience.
Le’Nise Brothers: Wow. At nine years old and not really having had that conversation. And so I wonder when you got home, what was the conversation like with your parents?
Eshani Kaushal: So the conversation. So I’m originally Indian and you know, in our culture as well, periods are kind of whispered about and you don’t really talk about these things with your dad or your brother or your uncle and stuff.
So for me, naturally I felt a lot more comfortable talking about it with my mom and I told her, oh I’ve been told that I have a period and that means that I’m going to bleed every month. And my teacher had called my mom beforehand. So my mom knew. I was using the public transport at the time, so I had like a bus that would collect because my mom was working full time and she couldn’t come to pick me up.
But so when I went home, my mom was ready. Like she had a book ready for me. She had the pads and you know, my mom was like really into clean period care even at that time. Um, so she had these cotton pads that she had made for herself that she used to use, so she introduced me to those and that I would bleed every, every month is very normal. She kind of like really normalised that because I was very anxious, as you can imagine. And then, you know, I, I voiced to her that I’m the only one and I had grown breasts and I already felt so out of place at that age. And then now I have a period as well and these really drastic changes were happening to my body at a really fast pace. And so I think my mom kind of like calmed me down and normalised that whole thing. And she told me, I, I can’t tell you why you started your periods this early. It’s just individuals, you know. Um, there’s no formula. Some start late, some start early, but that it’s completely normal.
So that gave me a lot of comfort.
Le’Nise Brothers: And what about when you went back to school? Your friends had, sounds like they were really supportive, getting the teacher, telling you what was going on. And so at nine you said you were the first one of your friends to have started your period. So what happened when you went back to school?
Eshani Kaushal: I can’t recall if I was bullied about it? I don’t think so. I think if I was, I probably would have remembered. I think nobody really cared and, you know, very rapidly then everyone started to get their periods, um, in my age group and then, you know, by the time I went to the next class, the next year, it was kind of a very normal conversation. We started learning about it in school. I do think that what was traumatising for me is because I didn’t know how to use the pad really well, so I would have leaks and, you know, I would find myself in these situations, but I think the teachers, men and women, um, were very, very supportive when something like that happened.
Didn’t happen a lot. It did happen twice after I had started my period because I was so new to it. I did not position the pad really well when to change it. And so TMI, but that’s the reality of a lot of girls, right? So yeah, I, I think there was a lot of support and the embarrassment I felt was in my head, uh, but not because someone made me feel embarrassed about it.
Le’Nise Brothers: Getting a period at nine, which is quite young. And then your friends started to get their periods and you kind of all went through this together, really supportive environment at school. What was your period like throughout the rest of your teenage years?
Eshani Kaushal: Really painful.
I think like I’ve always had really bad cramps and I’ve never really quite figured out why. You know, I speak to some women and it’s the same thing, right? Some women have periods that are not as aggressive and others have really, you know, debilitating pain and really painful first couple of days, right? So I think I fall into the latter category where I’ve always had really bad cramps. When I got a little bit older, I got diagnosed with fibroids at 24. And then I thought maybe it was because I had some sort of hormonal imbalance. That’s why my period have been so, heavy and so painful.
And after my diagnosis, it just kind of got worse and worse and worse. So I mean, we could touch on this later. But I actually had surgery to remove one of the fibroids last year, and my periods have been so much less, uh, less aggressive since I’ve had that surgery. So maybe that was the issue that was causing my periods to be so painful.
But yeah, to answer your questions, it’s, it’s not been nice.
Le’Nise Brothers: What’s really interesting is how you were able to get a fibroid diagnosis so early on. Because what I see in my practice is there are two things. It’s still a lack of understanding of fibroids even though they’re one of the most common gynaecological conditions, but also once the understanding is there, getting a diagnosis and then having effective treatment. So you kind of went through all of that really quickly. Can you talk to us a little bit about the diagnosis pathway that you went on?
Eshani Kaushal: Yeah, it was not quick at all. So actually even how I got diagnosed, just because I felt really strongly that there is something wrong, and at 24 was the first time that I went to the doctor by myself.
You know, it was usually like with my mom when I was younger, when you’re sick. And um, I’d never gone to the gynaecologist before I was 24 either. Which was stupid of me, I should have, but I, I was always so afraid. Right. I just wanted to avoid going to the doctor, I didn’t like the energy of the hospital.
But I went because I just felt like something is not right. And at that time I was hearing a lot of girls talking about, oh, my sister had a, an ovarian cyst and it ruptured. And I think like I have a lot of health anxiety or had a lot of health anxiety at that time and I had, you know, just moved to Dubai and my insurance was practically covering for everything.
And I was like, okay, let me make use of this and let me go and see a doctor. And they did an ultrasound and the doctor was like, there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s totally fine. But the doctor that said this to me was different to the person doing the ultrasound. So I actually asked the person doing the ultrasound. It was a nurse or I guess the ultrasound person at the time. They said, you know what? It’s benign so I don’t want you to worry about it, but you do have a fibroid, but it’s one centimetre. I called my doctor. She was like, well, you know when we find fibroids that are one centimetre, two up to two centimetres, we don’t tell our patients because they just get anxiety for no reason.
It’s nothing like you have no symptoms. Yes, it’s there, but it’s not doing anything. Your periods are normal. So I didn’t think that you needed to know, and I thought that was so outrageous because I do, it’s my body and you find anything, whether benign or not, I have the right to know and you have the right to tell me.
And I think the attitude was so blasé and that continued for many, many, many years. So I was 24, then I was 32 last year, which is when I had my surgery. So I suffered for almost 10 years because my fibroid went from one centimetre to 3 centimetres to five to seven, and when they actually operated and went in, it was 12 centimetres and my surgery was an emergency surgery.
So I have been gaslit by the medical system for 10 years because my doctors kept telling me it’s normal. My doctor put me on the pill as a treatment option for the fibroid, knowing full well I was pumping estrogen into my body and fibroids thrive on estrogen, which meant that my fibroid grew in at a very, you know, fast pace until I was, so, I worked in the startup environment before starting Moodee, my company right now. I was raising a pre-seed run, really intensive face, and they called me in and said, you need to take this fibroid out because it’s now turning into something that’s no longer benign. And when I called my, when I remember a second opinion, my doctor said that she has no clue why I’m taking this pill.
Like I should have not been put on this pill. And this pill is the reason why I’m in this situation today. So when I called my doctor that put me on the pill and asked her about it, her response was, you know, it worked for some people, it just doesn’t work for others. And she took such a massive gamble with my life and I think the idea of Moodee came about. But yeah, so it was not an easy journey. It was actually very difficult 10 years.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. Firstly, I have to apologise for saying that you went through this quite quickly because that’s what the way it sounded initially, but it’s clear that it wasn’t. And that growth going from one centimetre to 12 centimetre.
Having that synthetic estrogen, which as you say, fibroids, that’s their fuel source, so, wow. And talk to us about having the surgery and now what you’ve done since then to manage the estrogen in the body and manage your body so that we know that fibroids can come back, but what kind of treatment plan do you have in place now?
Eshani Kaushal: So, you know, the challenge in women’s health is that my doctor or any doctor cannot tell me why I have estrogen dominance. They also cannot tell me what I can do I balance my hormones and to lower my estrogen levels. I get a lot of generic information from my doctors. The same information that I can get from a simple Google search.
So it’s some, you know, women, we rely on a lot of trial and error, which is so dangerous because you may try something that actually ends up making your symptoms or your situation worse, right? And that’s the reality of women’s health globally. And so I can’t tell you that I have a treatment option.
I’m just trying to figure it out. I’m trying to figure out how can I, you know, all of the natural, homeopathic or nonprescription treatment options that are available I’m trying all of them, uh, and hoping that my fibroid doesn’t come back. I do regular checks, but the reality is, after I did my surgery, my doctor told me chances are, and very high likelihood that your fibroid’s going to come back.
It’s just how women’s health operates. Endo comes back, PCOS comes back, fibroids come back. So there’s no winning right now in women’s health, so I’m just trying to figure it out. I’m trying to eat clean. I try to do an anti-inflammatory diet, even though that’s not a very sustainable lifestyle. But I try to do it as much as I can.
I do have my moments where I slip off and, you know, will devour a whole slice of cake knowing that that’s probably going to create some sort of hormonal imbalance. But it’s because we don’t have that medical support. I’m kind of just left alone to figure it out by myself.
Le’Nise Brothers: Just to kind of give you some reassurance because this is my area of specialty, so there is a lot that you can do, and having a slice of cake isn’t going to totally throw everything off.
You know, it’s really important to find,
Eshani Kaushal: love to hear that.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. Joy and pleasure through food. But yeah, there is a lot that you can do and a lot of the ways that you can support your body, when you have fibroids. But what I’m really interested in, in talking about now is PCOS. You had this large fibroid, but I also read you talking about your PCOS journey.
So can you just say a little bit more about that?
Eshani Kaushal: So I got diagnosed with PCOS on my first ultrasound after my surgery. And the approach or the attitude to words that diagnosis was also very much not serious. So I remember lying down and the doctor doing the ultrasound and she’s like, Hmm, looks like you have PCOS.
And frankly speaking it’s not something that I’m proud of. I had heard of PCOS, but I really didn’t know what it meant. You know, I knew that it’s a condition that maybe means that you have some cysts in your ovaries, but, ’cause I didn’t really have it, it’s not something I was dealing with so many other issues, you know, my own hormone health, so it’s not something that I really knew about.
So I asked my doctor and I got really nervous because remember I just had a surgery and I was thinking, oh my gosh, do I have to go and have another surgery? It was quite depressing to hear that at that moment. And then I asked her like, what is PCOS? And the feedback was PCOS can mean a lot of different things.
We don’t know what type of PCOS you have right now, but all I see is that you have on one of your ovaries, follicles, are PCOS pattern, and that was it. That’s the information I got. I asked a couple of questions. I also didn’t know what type of questions to ask about, and I went and did my own research, spoke to a couple of people, got referred to a PCOS expert.
Went and saw her, and I think that’s when I really realised how diverse PCOS is and how diverse the symptoms of PCOS are. And just because you have a PCOS pattern in your ovaries doesn’t mean that you diagnosed with PCOS. So right now I don’t have any symptoms of PCOS, but every time I go to my doctor, she’ll tell me, yep that’s a polycystic ovary right there, but my periods are normal. I don’t really have hirsutism believe it’s called. I don’t have acne. I don’t have unexplainable weight gain. And so that means that I don’t have the formal diagnosis. Uh, but at the same time, it’s something that’s always at the back of my mind that am I going to develop these symptoms and is it going to become a full fledged diagnosis?
Le’Nise Brothers: What you’re saying is so fascinating because, you know, we, we’ve just come out of PCOS Awareness month in September, and one of the things that I see a lot of, and I do a lot of myself, is education around PCOS because there’s polycystic ovarian syndrome is a condition where the name is it, it needs a rebrand because you know, we have a lot of people, and I’ve seen this in my own practice, where they’ve been diagnosed with PCOS. And then five years later, they actually find that they don’t have PCOS. They’ve seen polycystic ovaries on an ultrasound, and that’s been the diagnosis.
And then once you go deeper with a lot of different diagnosis tests, including blood tests, urine tests, you as you say, you know, you don’t have hirsutism which is the hair on the face, the jaw, the chest, the abdomen. But there are other symptoms of PCOS. And once you go deeper into this blood and urine testing, you find the, like the patterns, or you don’t find the patterns and you say, well, actually, you shouldn’t have been diagnosed with that. So this actually makes me sad that you have this in the back of your head, but then you know your body and you’re seeing well, my periods are regular I don’t have the other things that you typically hear about when it comes to PCOS, so why are you telling me this?
So I like would really encourage you, just kind of putting my practitioner hat on to get a second opinion if you haven’t already because you know, you’ve talked before about health anxiety and you know, anxiety around going to the doctor and then I’ll actually layering this feeling of, what’s going on here?
And having this in the back of your head, that’s not a great, that’s not where you want to be. You know, we talk about stigmas and taboos and, you know, fears around women’s health. And to know that your doctor could be contributing to this isn’t, isn’t great. So just my, that’s my 2 cents there. Apologies if I’ve overstepped in any way.
Eshani Kaushal: Absolutely not. No, I appreciate it so much. And you’re absolutely right. It’s just like, I feel like it’s just another thing on my plate in terms of my hormonal health that I have to constantly be worried about. And every time I go for a simple pap, I always feel the need to ask them. Just check if I, my PCOS is severe, or like, can you double check if I have PCOS?
Like this is what I’m always asking any new doctor that I try, right? Because I just, I’m so anxious that I’m, I’ve been misdiagnosed because remember, this has been my experience with the medical space for the past nine years. Misdiagnosis, or kind of just like the unseriousness surrounding it.
So you are absolutely right. I mean, and I have, you know, also finding that right type of doctor that will tell you the right type of information, you know, as opposed to what they’re used to telling their patients. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I feel like the doctor I have now, for example, is a lot more informative.
Like she’s the one who told, taught me what PCOS means and how different it could look like. And every time I go to her, she wants to, you know, reassure me, but my fibroid doctor is somebody else. So, so I have these differing opinions, and that in itself can be confusing.
Le’Nise Brothers: You have this kind of, if you think about, you know, when you have a business, you have an origin story. Most people, they have an origin story that drives their kind of passion for the business that they, they set up. So you were a corporate lawyer, a corporate and tech lawyer until March this year.
Have I got those timings right till earlier this year.
Eshani Kaushal: You’re you’re right. Yeah. Yeah,
Le’Nise Brothers: yeah. And now you are an entrepreneur. Can you talk to us about this transition? So going from having this secure role where you’re working for someone else to just jumping in to becoming an entrepreneur.
And what I’m also really interested in is the unique challenges of being a female entrepreneur in the Middle East, in the GCC. Can you say a little bit more about that?
Eshani Kaushal: Yes. It was a leap of faith and a very high risk for me because I think I worked for so many years in a very specific, all of my experience, my connection, my knowhow expertise was from that industry.
But I think, you know, like lived experience is very important when I think you, you feel really passionately about something, especially in women’s health because there’s such few fem techs or women’s health companies in the Middle East or even globally, I think. Right? So I think lived experience goes long way.
Statistics are very important because they’re so staggering. Um, so it shows you that there is a massive gap and I think like there is a global gap in women’s health, but I feel like it gets bigger as you come down to the Middle East, Asia, Africa. And there’s several different factors about that.
And one of them is because how stigmatised women’s health is and how it’s a taboo to talk about certain conditions that affect us or talk about our reproductive health very openly. So I think there’s that, and that’s a fact. But I will say that being a Femtech founder in the Middle East has never hindered my existence, or has never affected, or the reception that Moodee is getting. I think that the more taboo the topic is in women’s health, the more positive response I have seen. And I think the reason for that is because the market is so progressive when it comes to technology and you know, I think that there’s several different government initiatives that want to support women led businesses in the region because the population of female entrepreneurs specifically in the UAE, is actually quite high.
Right. And so there’s a lot of support and backing on female led innovation in the region. Um, and I think this is one of the things that I would to about the, the perception of the Middle East in the rest of the world because I have found so much support from the regulators, so much support from investors that are male, that are from the Middle Eastern market because they see the gap in the market, but they also see how massive commercial opportunity it is to build a women’s health company because, you know, globally it’s about to be a $1 trillion market, right?
So the female consumer is the ultimate decision maker. And many households, up to 80% of the households, they make the health and wellness decisions. Right. And so I think they see that opportunity and they see that there is a gap and they see that the female consumer is becoming more aware and is demanding more even in the Middle East, right?
Challenges that I faced are to do with kind of just like growing a business, right, that every entrepreneur faces, but it hasn’t been necessarily because I’m a female and I’m developing. Not at all.
Le’Nise Brothers: Okay. That’s interesting. So this kind of leads onto the next question around stigma and taboo, specifically around women’s health.
So talking about periods, talking about menopause, talking about fertility, because you say the market is huge and I absolutely agree we see opportunities in so many parts of women’s health. But how do you then connect that with, I do see this with male VCs. They can be hesitant in investing in fem tech.
You know, I spoke to a female founder last year and she was telling me that when she walked in the room, it was all male VCs and she walked in, she was pregnant. And with her business partners, she could just see they immediately took her less seriously. Then she started talking about fertility and her business is all around fertility and there was this scoffing and you know, they had to work extra hard to even get them to take them seriously.
And so I wonder about that, especially when you layer in the potential stigmas around talking about periods in Islam. Can you just say a little bit more about that?
Eshani Kaushal: Yeah. So I think what her experience was definitely something that is quite normal for women to experience.
Like in my experience, I’m also raising pre-seed. We’re a super young company. We’re raising money as we speak, and I’ve only managed to speak with one female VC and I’ve probably had a hundred conversations. Right. And yeah, I do feel, I do find that if your business is just femtech, just female health, there is an aversion, and I don’t know why. I can’t tell you why, because I see the opportunity and there are some VCs that will see it immediately, but they, because they’ve backed femtech before and they’ve probably had a positive experience, but for majority of the VCs, I see that they’re not keen and I haven’t been able to figure out why.
But you know, when it comes to like taboo, stigma and all of that. I think it’s not a religious factor, so it’s not something that is an Islamic thing. I think it’s a traditional cultural thing that you’ll find in Africa, in Asia, like I originally, I’m Indian, but I grew up in Kenya, right, in Nairobi, and so it’s the taboo there as well. Taboo, you know, it’s a taboo in, in majority of Asia as well. It’s a taboo in, I would even say the global north in, you know, certain topics make people uncomfortable when it comes to women’s health, even in the “developed” world, right?
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm.
Eshani Kaushal: So I think that stigma exists globally, but like I was saying, there’s a lot of cultural and traditional factors when you come down to the Middle East and Africa and Asia that come into play which is wild because these regions were so progressive. Back in the day when I talk about Asia in Hinduism, how a female is treated right and her positioning in society in Islam, how respected a woman is, and you know that the concept of periods, it was never considered dirty. It was actually what made a woman, although that’s not the right way to look at it anymore, but you know, back in the day there was not much taboo and stigma around it.
Right. And women were powerful like we go to Egypt and you see how women were and respected, right? So it’s completely shifted. So, you know, when I’m trying to raise capital and I’m trying to build a company that has to not only navigate tough conversations about women’s health, but at the same time try to make it seem like a serious business. It’s not easy.
It’s not an easy journey because my investors know that I’m not building a company in Europe, for example, where there’s so many others that have paved the way for these top conversations. I’m the first one doing it and paving the way for others that are going to come after me. So I think that is a very difficult journey, and I think in my fundraising round, one of the biggest challenges is to kind of show them that access is built by that first person, that first company that comes in and says, I’m going to hard work and Moodee is that player that’s going to do the hard work and build an ecosystem where other femtech and women’s health can enter the market and provide a holistic health solution for women in the region. That’s where we are.
Le’Nise Brothers: Fantastic. I think what you’re doing is so admirable and so needed, and just to kind of build on what we’ve been talking about, you, I saw something that you wrote on LinkedIn where you wrote that women’s health isn’t a luxury, it’s infrastructure. I’ve never heard it put like that before, and I absolutely love that.
Can you say more about what you mean by that?
Eshani Kaushal: I think it’s very simple and I’m so surprised that more people don’t talk about it because, I mean, I read an article the other day that said, uh, the US alone they did some research and I’m going to send you the article after our call to quote it. The US alone lost $1.8 billion in productivity in the last two years because of absentism of women because of hormonal health issues, specifically menopause. Right. And we lose billions of dollars because we haven’t given women’s health the grace to figure out or to fund it enough to figure out why so many of us suffer in silence. Whether it’s having all of these diagnosis like Endo and PCOS and fibroids and ovarian cysts, like your doctor cannot tell you why you get endo, why you get PCOS, why your periods are painful, and when they finally give you a diagnosis, which in itself is so brutal because endo, one of the sure ways of diagnosing endo is through surgery. Right. And even then they’ll cut you open and be like, oops, that wasn’t endo. Right? And when they finally do diagnose you, they can’t tell you how to treat it.
Le’Nise Brothers: Hmm.
Eshani Kaushal: Right? They slap on the pill for every single diagnosis you have painful periods? Take the pill. You have PCOS? Take the pill. You have endo? Take the pill. Right. That’s the only prescription option that’s available to women and has been for decades now, right? So I think people fail to realise that we make up 50% of the world’s population. We make up a huge chunk of the workforce, right? We bring in billions and trillions of dollars into the economy.
And so I think that they have to view it as lost productivity and that women’s health is building infrastructure. When you fund women’s health, you enable women to do business. You enable women to be productive. You enable your economies to thrive. You enable families to grow. You enable children to have the right type of tools and education.
And that’s why I said that women’s health is infrastructure. It’s not a niche. That’s another thing that’s being used in women’s health is like, oh, when I’m raising money, it’s a niche. It’s not a niche, we’re 50% of the world’s population. How can you call it a niche? It just doesn’t make sense.
Le’Nise Brothers: That makes me laugh because when I was writing my book and it was being talked about and potentially to be sold to different publishers, one of the pieces of feedback I got was, oh, we’re not sure about this. Women’s health is a niche. Periods are a niche. And it made me laugh because I just thought we’re talking about 50% of the population and it’s something that that 50% has for potentially 40 years of their lives. How could this be? How can this ever be considered a niche? It’s just, wow. It just blows my mind, but saying that it’s a niche just shows this importance of education. It’s importance of helping others understand what they don’t understand.
And this actually leads to a question that, so looking on the Moodee website, so actually just take a step back. Tell us about Moodee. What is Moodee, what are you trying to do with Moodee? So just tell us a little bit more about your company.
Eshani Kaushal: Sure. So Moodee is a femtech based out of the UAE. We’re positioning ourselves as a global femtech for our immediate market is the Middle East because it’s so heavily underserved when it comes to women’s health.
And the idea for Moodee is to create access. I think there’s a bigger problem in women’s health, which is there’s no data, right? And the data that’s there is not really trustable. The data is maybe scattered all over the place because only 1% of the global R&D in healthcare goes towards women’s health. That’s why we were talking about earlier, that’s why your doctor can’t figure out why you get endo.
That’s why they can’t figure out how you’re going to treat it. And they can’t figure out why it comes back because they don’t know, they’re clueless. It’s not funded. So that’s the bigger issue. Right. So what’s the more immediately addressable issue, which is symptom care because all of us have symptoms, right? Being a woman is just navigating different kinds of symptoms at different stage of your life.
So if you’re starting your first period, you have a very unique set of symptoms. When you get one of these diagnosis of PCOS or endo et cetera, you’re navigating those. Pregnancy is another ball game, right? And then you enter menopause and don’t even get me started on that, right? Um, it’s so heavily understudied and underfunded.
So the idea for Moodee was to create access in the region because right now there is nothing. You have your same culprits that are, you know, that have been selling toxic period products that are laced with plastic and fragrance and all kinds of ingredients that we know are known endocrine disruptors that we give to our young daughters when they start their first periods and we continue to use them ourselves because we don’t have a choice, right?
We don’t have an option. You go to the supermarket, that’s all that’s available. You go to the pharmacy, that’s all they’re selling. So I think the idea of Moodee was to bring access to clean, non-toxic science backed products that are evidence-based, that have actually, there’s evidence that these have supported women with certain conditions and have offered symptom relief.
So to bring them into the country and work with some really cool regional and local players that are starting to c reate such products for women, right? And create a platform for them to host these products and find their customer base, make the consumer aware that you, you can have access to these really good products that support your hormones as opposed to disrupting them.
So that was the intention. But I think when we started, so before I started Moodee, we did six months of market research. Um. We reached out to 15 plus women in the region and we asked them what are the gaps personally for them in their, uh, health journey, right? What is missing in the region? And, you know, I don’t know if, you know, the UAE majority of the population is the expat population, at least in Dubai.
So you have people that have actually been exposed to clean period care and clean symptom relief in other markets. They can’t find them here. And so up to 90% of the population is the expat population in the, in the country. Right. I think like there was a lot of, when we did the survey, there was a lot of feedback of, Hey, I’ve used this in other markets, we just don’t have any here. So when I travel I have to stock up. And the idea was just to kind of just take that out of the picture. And so the one element that came out is a personalised solution that is, or products that are personalised to their lifestage. So, you know, if you’re a woman who’s navigating PCOS but is trying to have a baby, trying to conceive.
We have a recommendations engine on our platform, which will ask you some guided questions and then it’ll know that, okay, since you have PCOS, you’re trying to conceive, you’re having, you’re probably going to have somewhat of a difficult journey, so it’ll recommend product specific to you. Essentially right now, Moodee’s a curated marketplace, but like we were talking about the stigma and the taboo that exists in the region as well.
So one of the main missions of Moodee’s to de-stigmatise women’s health conversations through several different partnerships. We just partnered with, um, with schools to do series of conversations with year 11 and year 12 girls are navigating their first period. We’re talking to the local communities about STDs post marriage. Because in Islam, marriage is very sacred and a sexual relationship can only happen post-marriage. But we’re finding, this is through our, the data we’ve extracted from, uh, doctors and, uh, women’s health experts and gynecologists, that there is a lot of cases of women having their first sexual experience post, uh, marriage and getting exposed to some life threatening STDs, right?
So we’re taking doctors and speaking to these women about how to have protective sex after marriage and how to demand testing before you have unprotected sex. And what are STDs? Some of them don’t even know about that, right? So this is how we destigmatise. So Moodee becomes this knowledge hub, not just for women, but also men, because the idea is that men a lot of the times want to help and they want to support the daughters, sisters, partners, friends in their lives, but don’t really have the right type of tools. So the idea is that Moodee will become that knowledge hub for men to learn about, my sister just got diagnosed with PCOS, what does it mean?
Or My wife just got diagnosed with endometriosis. What does it mean and how I can help? Right? So I think knowledge and um, access to that knowledge is also a really important part of what we’re building.
Le’Nise Brothers: It sounds fascinating and it sounds so well needed. I think that what you’ve said there about tapping into the expat market where, you know, they live in the UK and they have access to the abundance of clean products that we have here and not being able to find the same in Dubai or you know, wherever they live in the UAE.
What about the section on the Moodee website? It’s called He Cares. And you touched on this a little bit, but you, the description is for every man who’s wanted to help but never knew quite how. Tell me more about why you thought that was important to include as a section on the website.
Eshani Kaushal: So I think it’s extremely important because when you also look at women’s health in general, the decision makers in women’s health sadly are not women.
The people that have the purse strings in their hands are also not women. And in fact, when we look at trials for medicine, that is created for women, women only make up 22%of these trials and these medication is tested on male DNA and on animal cells, right? So this is the reality we’re living in. And a really sad reality.
You know what we wanted to do differently with Moodee is we wanted to include the male gender in the women’s health conversation because they’re really central to a lot of our lives, whether it’s in the form of our dads, our close friends, our brothers, our partners, right? And I feel like women’s health is not a battle only for women to fight because we have a very important space in the men’s life as well. They value us and they want to help, and I think they should be given the option to go beyond just, you know, buying you chocolates or, you know, giving you, I guess, comfort during that time. I think they have to have the right type of tools, the right type of knowledge to really understand all the noise that we’re making, right? What does it mean when I tell you I’m dying on the first two days of my period? Why? Why? Right? And they can go to Moodee and find access to these blogs that are written by women’s health experts and gynecologists that are explaining to them, and some of them are actually men.
Explaining to men, this is why her, you know, her uterine lining sheds, or this is what a PCOS diagnosis means, or this is how difficult it’s for a woman to get pregnant. Uh, because, you know, there is a lot of cultural aspects when it come that come to play when, when we talk about fertility in the region, right?
A woman not being able to carry a child could have, uh, negative reaction. Right. So we want to educate the man. He Cares very specifically is actually a period kit that we created that’s targeted towards the man to buy for her, right? So I think that’s kind of like when you’re given the option to kind of buy her or introduce her for the first time to a period panty or a period cup or you know, period patches that, you know, make sure that she’s no longer using of the toxic stuff.
She’s no longer, you know, drugging herself up with painkillers on the first two days of her period, and she can actually use natural, uh, treatment options that are not going to make her symptoms worse. So that’s what He Cares is, I mean, at least right now, the idea is that He Cares, will expand into an entire section towards the man to give them knowledge, to give them access, the option to speak to experts and learn about women’s health.
Le’Nise Brothers: That’s so needed. And again, it’s another way of reducing stigma where because education is so key. Once you have the knowledge, you can do better and you can help anyone in your life who has a period who is suffering just by having that knowledge and then that potentially extends the depth of the empathy that they can extend.
So tell us about what’s coming up next, for you, for the website, for your company. It’s still very new. There’s a lot going on in the background, but what’s your kind of vision for the next year?
Eshani Kaushal: So there’s a lot that’s going to change. Our entire website is going to be redone.
We’ve already pulled down our recommendations engine. That’s going to be a lot more advanced. The AI is going to be a lot more advanced in getting to know you at a deeper level and. Building that very intimate connection with you as a consumer and learn about you so that the recommendations can get a lot more advanced.
So from a technical standpoint, there’s a lot that’s going to change. We’re onboarding so many different partners. I think the idea first is to remain curated, which mean that we have our own due diligence process. If you meet that certain criteria, you get onboarded and, and it’s made accessible to the Middle Eastern market.
So we have so many really cool brands and concepts in women’s health that are not available in the region that will be onboarding very, very soon. And I think the next phase for us is to really expand our operations and, you know, target the Middle East as a whole because it’s a gap that exists Middle East wide.
And this is our market, at least in the beginning. So we want to tap into Qatar, Bahrain, and make Moodee that trusted women’s Health partner and you know, our focus is D2C, so really building that trust through community, and that’s what we’re doing. So we’re going to have so many more community events, we’re already doing them right.
So many more conversations and try to destigmatise women’s health from children navigating their first period to women navigating, um, menopause, in C-suite, executive level positions. Right. So really have those conversations and have community events. Build our community and build trust. I always say we’re building trust first brand later.
Because on our, we looked at our case studies on successful health startups. That’s the, the recipe that has worked well. And I think especially for women’s health because we talking about such topics that are so, that trust is very, very important. So in the next one year, I think our focus is building trust through community, through access and making Moodee that trusted health partner for every woman in the Middle East.
Le’Nise Brothers: Fantastic. I can’t wait to see what comes next for you. What’s the one thought that you’d like to leave listeners with?
Eshani Kaushal: I think a lot of the times, even women we tend to think that our reproductive health is not part of health or that it’s not part of healthcare.
And I think one of the battles we’re fighting even whether it’s raising our round or whether it’s working with the regulator, is making them see that Reproductive health is healthcare and that it’s not an arm to healthcare. Right. Uh, if a woman’s reproductive health is not okay, she’s not okay. She’s a sick person.
And I think even us as women sometimes tend to forget that, uh, our heart is okay, our cholesterol levels are good, our kidneys are functioning well, but the only problem I’m having is I got a PCOS diagnosis. You know? And the reality is there’s a reason you got that. Mm-hmm. You just have to figure out why.
I think we, we have a tendency to think that women’s healthcare is not healthcare. And I think that, I hope Moodee can change that through these conversations, and I hope that through all of these other cool femtech and innovative women’s health companies that are coming up, that we can change that mindset.
That there’ll be a real shift in that mindset and that women’s health finally gets the respect that it deserves. Because right now women are being treated as the lesser gender. Actually posted something about this on LinkedIn. If you ever had a doubt that women are treated as the less gender, look at the statistics.
Le’Nise Brothers: Where can people find you?
Eshani Kaushal: So they can find us on our website. Of course they can find us on LinkedIn. We’re called Moodee com. LinkedIn. We’re called Moodee Co on Instagram and Moodee Mena on TikTok. We’re active on all of these platforms, um, I think for a lot more of the educational content. Follow us on our website and our LinkedIn, and for all the fun content, follow us on Instagram and TikTok.
Le’Nise Brothers: Great. So all the links will be in the show notes and the links to the articles that you mentioned as well. Thank you so much for coming onto the show today. It’s been so fascinating to speak to you, to hear your story. So thank you so much again.
Eshani Kaushal: Likewise. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.