What target market does Embrace seek to serve and how attractive is that market?
Embrace Infant Warmer is targeting endangered premature babies born in the developing countries, who face fatal risks due to hypothermia. The product also targets mothers and family of premature babies, especially those in rural villages who do not have the resources to come to hospitals for delivery and incubator facilities. There are many infant deaths every year in developing countries due to hypothermia and the co-founders aim to deliver a product that is a cheaper alternative to protect premature babies. Since, premature babies need incubators to survive after birth and adjust to temperature changes outside their mother’s body, the embrace infant warmer helps in keeping the premature newborns safe. Therefore, the products are a solution for mothers to ensure their premature babies get the basic incubator technology at affordable rates and many mothers in rural villages can simply buy or rent the incubator for childbirth and protect their infant.
The market for incubators is very attractive as developing countries have high birth rates in comparison to developed countries. Also, many families are unable to reach hospitals based in cities or they choose to have childbirth at home or in a facility nearby. Many of these facilities do not have incubators as they are costly and several premature babies die due to hypothermia after child birth as they are unable to cope with the change in temperature. As a product, incubators are a life saving device that many families in the developing world can actually afford, unlike the incubators that are costly and only available with major hospitals. Developing countries have millions of births every year, especially India, which has a booming birth rate, several rural births and many premature born babies die due to hypothermia. Therefore, market for Embrace Infant Warmer is very huge in developing countries.
What examples of primary research that Embrace’s founders completed appear in the case?
There were many discoveries during the primary research that helped in developing the Embrace Infant Warmer. One of the co-founders named Liang got funding for a trip to Nepal for studying the use of incubators in developing countries. In Nepal, Liang discovered that the majority of the incubators were empty in the hospitals as the majority of the premature babies were born in rural villages. Since, the infants born prematurely are never brought to the hospitals, the chances of them dying increases heavily. Also, there were many cases where premature babies were born in hospitals, but their parents took them home due to personal reasons. These reasons strengthened the belief of the co-founders to develop a product that could save millions of premature babies in the developing countries.
While preparing the prototype through feedback in India, there were many aspects of the product that were uncovered. The co-founders learned that Indian women believe that American medicine is too strong for their child and they choose to cut back on the dosages routinely. In addition, the co-founders also discovered that rural villagers wanted pricing options such as renting as many did not want to purchase. The co-founders revealed that these details would have never been uncovered unless they decided to go to India. The co-founders did further research and uncovered details such as the design of the product, the straps, the need to print instructions and in some cases the mother-in-laws were the decision maker. Their decision helped them to better understand the needs of the market and zero in on several details related to Embrace Infant Warmer.
