Necessity mother of this startup

KAILAS NARENDRAN, founder of kiinde LLC, is now selling innovative products for mothers and babies in stores throughout North America and South Korea. “It’s always a confluence of stressors that results in innovation,” he said. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE
KAILAS NARENDRAN, founder of kiinde LLC, is now selling innovative products for mothers and babies in stores throughout North America and South Korea. “It’s always a confluence of stressors that results in innovation,” he said. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE

It’s 3 a.m. and your wife is at work – she’s a doctor who works long hours – and she has left you to care for your infant daughter.
With one arm, you are holding a very hungry baby. With the other, you awkwardly rummage in the freezer for a plastic pouch of frozen breast milk and then try to maneuver the pouch under a running faucet so that it will thaw.
The baby continues to cry. She wants her milk.
You are a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated engineer who can’t believe that the process of feeding a baby is more difficult than building complex humanoid robots that cost one-quarter of a million dollars, which is what you do for a living.
So, what do you do?
If you’re Kailas Narendran, you invent a device that can quickly thaw breast milk to precisely the right temperature for feeding – any higher and the breast milk loses its nutrients. You look at the most basic of human endeavors, feeding a child, as a scientific challenge, resulting in a new company, kiinde LLC, which is now selling innovative products for mothers and babies in stores throughout the United States, Canada and South Korea.
“It’s always a confluence of stressors that results in innovation,” Narendran said, speaking from his home office in Warwick, where he sat recently by himself before three computer screens, juggling the numerous issues involved in being an entrepreneur whose company manufactures its products in China and distributes it on two continents.
In his case, the stressors included a working wife and mother, Katie Fillion, whom Narendran drily called “our compass for product development,” a decision to breastfeed their two daughters, and the realization that the products on the market for nursing moms and babies might come in every color in the rainbow, but they didn’t get the job done, at least not by Narendran’s efficiency standards.
When he first started to shop for baby products at big, specialty-retail chains, Narendran was more amazed by what wasn’t on the shelves rather than what was there.
“Everybody sells the same thing colored five ways,” he said.
As he saw it, his task was to come up with something new, something that should have been obvious to other designers and manufacturers – a warmer that is safe for breast milk – but which hadn’t been invented yet. The result is the “Kozii,” a deceptively simple appliance about the size of a small can opener that creates a warm circulating bath into which exhausted parents can place a pouch of frozen breast milk and have it ready for feeding an infant in a minute or two. It can be plugged in next to a bed, whereas a faucet requires a parent to get out of bed and traipse to the kitchen. Convenience, then, is one of the Kozii’s main selling points.
But perhaps just as important to parents who choose to breastfeed their children, the Kozii warms breast milk to the exact temperature required to preserve the milk’s nutrients – between 60-63 degrees. An automatic shutoff timer prevents the milk from getting too warm.
Narendran and his Boston-based business partner, John McBean, a fellow MIT graduate, made the Kozii available for sale on Amazon.com by the had fall of August 2011.
Initially, the product was manufactured in Waltham, Mass. But as online sales began to take off, the partners decided to manufacture their product in China. The quality of the Kozii made in China was better than the one made in the United State and manufacturing costs for the entrepreneurs were cheaper overseas, Narendran said.
In the spring of 2012, Buy Buy Baby, a national retail chain, agreed to sell the Kozii in eight of its stores, a big step for fledgling kiinde. Then in the fall of that year, the chain agreed to sell the heater in all 64 U.S. locations. Babies “R” Us soon followed suit, stocking the Kozii in more than 150 stores, proving to Narendran that consumers wanted his product.
While all of this was happening, Narendran and McBean continued to think of ways to make the lives of nursing moms – and their mates – easier. To do this, Narendran once again looked to his personal experience. Why, he asked himself, when he was once again standing by the kitchen sink with a hungry baby in his arms, were there always so many things to wash after feeding a baby?
“God didn’t mean it to be that way,” he said.
Applying his analytical mind to the process of breastfeeding, Narendran saw that it involved several steps – pumping the milk, storing the milk, thawing the milk, then pouring the milk into a bottle – all of which used separate containers and tops, creating mayhem for a parent holding a hungry child. Why not create one bottle that could be used throughout the process?
The result is a series of kiinde products that enables parents to pump, store, warm and feed with a single pouch. This line includes a plastic bin for pouches that allows for vertical storage in a freezer, a “Squeeze” bottle that allows direct feeding from the pouch and “Active-Latch” nipples, which require infants to suck before the milk begins to flow, thereby encouraging healthy nursing behavior. “Our entire point is to be there when mom can’t be,” said Narendran.
The market of nursing moms is growing. According to the 2012 “Breastfeeding Report Card” issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of women in the U.S. who are breastfeeding is rising. As of 2009, the most recent data cited by the report, 76.9 percent of women began breastfeeding at birth, 47.2 percent were still breastfeeding at six months and 25.5 percent were still breastfeeding at one year.
Kiinde is beginning to make a name for itself in the growing industry.
“At Babies ‘R’ Us, we strive to provide a variety of items that offer unique features and benefits that cater to parents’ needs. … In particular, the kiinde Kozii, which safely and quickly warms breast milk, formula and food without damaging any of the nutrients, has been popular with parents,” Samantha Xenis, spokeswoman for parent company Toys “R” Us Inc., told Providence Business News last week.
TheWISEbaby blog on Dec. 18 called the kiinde feeding system “a completely, utterly awesome new way to feed breast milk to your baby. It eliminates the need to transfer expressed breast milk from bag/bottle to bottle and back again.”
A review posted by Mom & Pop Culture on Dec. 10 said the system “makes pumping, storing and feeding a simple task instead of a huge chore.”
The company last week declined to provide annual sales figures, but a spokesman said it employs four people, all of whom work at home, in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Narendran’s entrepreneurial experience before parenthood led to his current venture presented different challenges than he’s found in the consumer marketplace.
With McBean, he designed and sold a therapeutic robot arm for Myomo Inc., then custom-designed humanoid robots for Xitome Design. But the robotics products, while interesting, had limited market potential.
Entering the larger consumer market has allowed Narendran the satisfaction that comes with being able to “feel the pain” shared by new parents and offer a solution.
“It’s a very fulfilling experience,” he said. •

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