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Business Unusual

Tackling Healthcare for All

From the Desk of
Our “unusual” social business journey, from Shaline’s support through her expertise and her Maverick investment to develop our social marketing into a social business unit at PSI, to its evolution and conceptualization into Viya Health today, stands as a beacon of progress.

Dear Maverick Collective community,

I am thrilled to welcome you to our first ISSUE of 2024 – Business Unusual – where we will explore the origins and evolution of Viya Health, PSI’s groundbreaking social business solution for women’s health, and the Maverick partnerships that helped us launch it.

At PSI, we understand that women’s healthcare isn’t just about reproductive health. It is also about pleasure, choices, agency, and mental health. It is about understanding how factors like age, life stage, and culture impact the way women experience sex and their well-being, and addressing the barriers that stand in the way of their health and happiness. We see an opportunity through Viya Health to realize an ambitious and transformational vision for holistic women’s healthcare.

At the core of Viya Health is the VIYA brand, an end-to-end solution that promises a frictionless user journey, conceived, and designed as a model for, by, and with women, where the consumer is CEO. VIYA brings together Viya Health products based on the user’s specific market and supplements them with other products and services our consumers need and desire. VIYA is a catalyst for change, disrupting social business offerings, allowing us to influence women’s health offerings in traditionally under-invested markets, and disrupting the male-dominated, input-driven, and top-down development business model that is currently the status quo.

From periods to pleasure and beyond, VIYA is our consumer’s go-to brand for reliable information, decision-making support, and access to a range of quality products and services, all available in the palm of their hand.

And we are seeing early success! After launching the VIYA brand in South Africa in December 2021, we are now in six markets, have reached 18M users in 2023 on digital channels, and have provided more than 150M health products and services across the continuum from periods to pleasure, from menstruation to menopause. From recent consumer insights collected in South Africa, 77% of our consumers feel more confident in the uptake of products or services that they want.

Our “unusual” social business journey, from Shaline’s support through her expertise and her Maverick investment to develop our social marketing into a social business unit at PSI, to its evolution and conceptualization into Viya Health today, stands as a beacon of progress. With its relentless dedication to breaking taboos, dispelling misinformation, and enhancing the quality of women’s health delivery, Viya Health is an example of how social business not only creates ripples of change but also illuminates a transformative path forward.

I cannot wait to continue sharing this journey with you!

Kindly,

Marcie Cook
Viya Health Founder and Vice President, PSI

EPISODE 7 | Business Unusual

Tune in to Episode 7 of Maverick Beat to go behind the scenes with Maverick Member Shaline Gnanalingam and the VIYA team to see how PSI's social business approach is evolving – its challenges, opportunities, and future. Explore the impact VIYA has had on our consumers, the team, PSI, and Maverick Collective Members.

Toggle between the project tabs below to watch the full-length episodes and explore the project pages including our member “journal”, stories from our consumers, photos, and more!

Building the Capacity of the Social Enterprise Unit at PSI (now Viya Health)
It feels really good to be a part of the movement, it’s definitely something that I believe in.

Viya has created a platform that makes women feel safe to share and gain access to the correct information around sexual and reproductive health, or any other form of reproductive health, not only sexual health.

It feels really good to be a part of the movement, it’s definitely something that I believe in.

I think it’s important that more platforms and spaces are creative like this, especially for young girls in South Africa because anything to do with reproductive health is still considered as quite taboo.

The fact that VIYA health is pushing the boundaries and have made me a part of it, makes me feel like we’re onto something, and we can change the world. It’s great to be a part of it.

Lindiwe Rasekoala

Intimacy and sexual wellness coach/sex educator/content creator

Balfour Park, Johannesburg

Lindiwe Rasekoala
Intimacy and sexual wellness coach/sex educator/content creator

  • ~40M people reached globally with information supporting access to sexual and reproductive health products and services during COVID-19
  • $1.5M additional funding leveraged for the expansion of PSI's Social Business Unit
When I set out to join Maverick, I wanted to become a better advocate and be more outspoken. The work that I've done, the people that I've met, and the stories that I've learned have definitely helped me do exactly that. Shaline Gnanalingam
Maverick Member

REIMAGINING HEALTHCARE FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS

This project supported the Social Business Unit (SBU) at PSI to reimagine healthcare for women and girls worldwide. The project used a a consumer-powered approach that puts care in their hands and delights them with new products and services.

Now consolidated under Viya Health, our diverse global enterprise portfolio has expanded across 26 countries.

It paved the way for the Building New Business Models to Improve Healthcare in East Africa project, supported by Maverick member Hilary Hamm. Both Maverick investments played a crucial role in expanding PSI’s social business portfolio across several regions.

Building on the success of both projects, PSI launched a new social business in Kenya, made progress on a Southeast Asia regional enterprise plan, and supported the design and launch of VIYA — PSI’s first sexual health and wellness brand — all while capturing learnings and prioritizing process improvement for future initiatives to ensure sustainability and scalability.

Pandemic-Proof

This project supported the creation of the Digital Acceleration Strategy, an agile response to COVID-19. Originally built on PSI’s Latin America digital business model for challenges in markets, we implemented a global solution across ten markets in South Asia, East Africa, and Latin America, harmonizing existing technology to support women’s and girls’ access to sexual and reproductive healthcare during the pandemic.

A Chatbot to Change Your Life

Building on previous design sprints and formative work among young Kenyan adults, NENA was designed to deliver novel sex-positive content related to genital health, health communication with sexual partners, sexual pleasure, and pleasure-focused practices such as orgasms and masturbation. This content was added to a menu of more traditional SRH content deployed by PSI, which includes an algorithm designed to provide information around STIs as well as contraceptive counseling and method information.

VIYA: A Bold New You

Through design and prototyping work done with consumers in East Africa, the concept of a wellness lifestyle brand was born. The concept was tested in additional markets and after being proven to resonate with consumers in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and South Africa, the SBU decided to design Viya for scale and approach the strategy from a global lens.

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The Consumer as CEO
For me, VIYA has represented more than just a space for women... it has become a community. A community of resilient, strong women eager to heal and reconnect with themselves and the world.

And I think that’s what stands out the most about this platform because there’s a lot of rivalry out there in the world, so finding these spaces gives hope to be able to build a new reality where sisterhood, listening, sharing, laughter, and accompaniment are the pillars for a better life.

Marinés Mejía
Psychologist & VIYA Brand Ambassador in Latin America

  • 18 Million users equipped with essential healthcare information at their fingertips in 2023
  • 77% of our consumers feel more confident in the uptake of products or services that they want
With its resolute dedication to breaking taboos, dispelling misinformation, and enhancing couples' agency in family planning decisions VIYA is an example of how social business not only creates ripples of change but also illuminates a transformative path forward. Ayesha Leghari
Country Director, PSI Pakistan

Marrying digital privacy with relatable, sex-positive educational content, VIYA equips women with the tools to choose and own their health journeys. The platform spans women’s lifecycles, going beyond standard siloed approaches that focus on one health area at one point in women’s lives.

VIYA creates opportunities for women and men to get informed, take control, and advocate for themselves.

From periods to menopause and beyond, our sexual health and wellness brand VIYA* is designed to be the go-to for reliable information, decision-making support, and access to a range of quality products and services, all housed on consumers’ phones. Marrying digital privacy with relatable, sex-positive educational content, VIYA fosters a supportive community where users can share experiences and receive guidance from counselors.

First launched in 2021 in South Africa, the VIYA brand is already operating with promising results in four additional markets – Cambodia, Guatemala, Kenya, Pakistan, and Uganda.

Consumer insights drive Viya Health from start to finish. Their voices, from product exploration to design, launch, and sales, ensure that products not only meet consumers’ needs but exceed their expectations. The consumer is our CEO.

*VIYA is a brand of Viya Health, PSI’s diverse portfolio of locally led, globally connected social businesses operating across 26 markets. It aims to find the balance between social impact and commercial viability, using innovation to expand access to essential health products and services

Pakistan: Freedom to be Curious

“It is not like a health care where you can be discriminated against or something. It is user-friendly, you can just get any information that you want. You can text any time you want and you get a response.” (Man*, 18-24)
*Names are anonymized

Guatemala: Healthcare & Privacy

VIYA is now integrating telehealth into its offering starting in Guatemala. The entry into Guatemala marks VIYA’s first venture into Latin America.

South Africa: Health Besties

In South Africa, VIYA is generating excitement and leveraging connections to help women rediscover their bodies and health in community through the VIYA Health Besties.

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Master Class: Business Unusual

Health systems change cannot happen if we continue to operate in traditional silos. Social business allows healthcare providers and consumers to find cross-cutting solutions without jumping through hoops and hurdles. So, why are they still so hard to finance and scale?

In this Master Class, we learned from social business practitioners and industry partners about the challenges and opportunities of operating in today’s fragmented and challenging markets and the key role of private philanthropy and investment in accelerating progress toward healthcare for all.

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Fareha Ahmed

Former Senior Manager, Social Business Unit

Fareha Ahmed began her career in international development, working on democracy, governance, and human rights issues. She later shifted to public health and reproductive access, and helped establish the Social Business Unit at Population Services International.

Fareha successfully transitioned into the energy and technology sector and is now a Senior Manager, heading up Commercial Operations at Arcadia. She strives to create meaningful change at the intersection of business, technology, and social impact. In her free time, Fareha is active in her local neighborhood school, loves to throw theme parties, and listen to podcasts that debunk popular knowledge.

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Shaline Gnanalingam

Maverick Collective Member

Shaline has spent 18 years in the finance industry, working in banking and private equity in Asia. She now runs her family office out of Hong Kong and is spearheading the transition from a traditional asset allocation model to impact investing to better align with family values while creating triple bottom line performance. Current impact projects are environmentally focused, in an effort to create a cleaner future for generations to come.  Shaline is passionate about bringing corporate best practices by tying together her experience in finance and investing to streamline the social enterprise model at PSI.

Shaline serves on the board of Westports Malaysia, the largest port operator in Malaysia. She has an MA in Economics from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Born and bred in Malaysia, Shaline now lives in Hong Kong with her husband, three sons and two dogs.

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Rosemary Kamwendo

Head of Marketing, PSI South Africa Social Business Unit

Rosemary Kamwendo leads the marketing function at PSI SA Social Business Unit and is the regional lead for VIYA. She is a seasoned manager with over 25 years of experience working in both the Pharmaceutical and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods Industries. She pairs her extensive experience in these industries to lead our brand-building efforts in South Africa and Southern African countries.

Rosemary has worked for both Multinational and local South African companies: AstraZeneca, Procter & Gamble, Gillette, and Adcock Ingram. Her career has given her work experience in multiple markets in Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.

Rosemary is skilled in developing and implementing regional strategy, leading projects, launching new products, and establishing and growing business in both new and mature markets and categories.

Before joining PSI in 2021, Rosemary was Marketing and Commercial Excellence Director at AstraZeneca, where she contributed to significant revenue growth for the Sub-Saharan region. Prior to that, while at Gillette, Rosemary was a Regional Business Manager for EMEA markets, where she provided guidance and localized global strategy for the Personal Care Business Unit, to ensure relevance for the region.

Rosemary holds a BCom Business Administration degree from the University of Malawi.

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Dr. Kimberly Motloung

Founder and Director of HealthHub Medical Solutions

Dr. Kimberly Motloung is a highly skilled medical professional, who graduated from the University Of the Witwatersrand with a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery.

With close to 10 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Dr Motloung has made a name for herself as a figure in the field of corporate wellness.

Throughout her career, Dr Motloung has held a variety of roles in the corporate healthcare sector, including working as a corporate doctor at Exec Care, Liberty Group, and Multichoice. In these roles, she was responsible for providing medical services and advice to employees, managing health and wellness programs, and developing and implementing strategies related to employee health and wellness.

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Andrea Novella

Global Digital Health Advisor, VIYA

Andrea Novella is a dedicated catalyst for change in global health, driving transformative health technology initiatives worldwide as the Global Digital Health Advisor for PSI’s Viya. With a profound commitment to underserved consumers in emerging markets, Andrea is actively transforming healthcare delivery, impacting millions of individuals across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. With over 15 years of experience in the health and wellness industry, Andrea has spearheaded technology-enabled, impact-driven initiatives for renowned global brands spanning from fashion to family planning. Her groundbreaking work has earned recognition from esteemed organizations like the WHO and Digital Compendium, reaching over 20M individuals in the past year alone.A Guatemalan native, she is fluent in multiple languages, and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Marketing from NYU, along with a Post Graduate Leadership Degree from MIT.

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Erin Harkless Moore

Senior Director, Investments, Pivotal Ventures

Erin leads the fund and direct investment program for Pivotal Ventures, a company created by Melinda French Gates to advance social progress in the United States. With nearly two decades of investment experience, building and managing customized portfolios for endowed institutions and family offices, Erin is responsible for identifying, investing and overseeing a diverse portfolio of investments that drive breakthrough innovations and advance women’s power and influence. On a day-to-day basis, Erin is deeply involved in discovering and cultivating relationships with leaders, entrepreneurs, investors and founders. She has sourced and conducted diligence on investment managers across asset classes, with a particular focus and expertise in the private markets and early-stage venture capital.

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Marcie Cook

Vice President, Social Business & Global Operations, PSI

Marcie Cook currently serves as Vice President, Social Business & Global Operations. Previously serving as Regional Director of Asia and Eastern Europe at PSI, Marcie provided overall strategic guidance for the region’s seventeen countries with an annual operating budget of $100 million. Marcie has experience working to support health markets in countries across Central and South East Asia and Africa. Before joining PSI, she held positions at the Institute for Media, Policy and Civic Society, the Story Workshop Educational Trust, University of Malawi and IBM, Canada LTD. Marcie holds a master’s in global affairs with a concentration in international business from New York University.

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Crisitna Ljungberg

Co-Founder, The Case for Her; Maverick Collective Member Co-Chair

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Wendy Anderson

Co-Founder, The Case for Her; Maverick Collective Member

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Miller Morris

Founder, The Comma Collective; Maverick Collective Member

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Audrey Duckett

Head of Philanthropic Partnerships, PSI

Audrey leads PSI’s strategy for new philanthropic partnerships, including our Maverick Collective members.

Prior to joining PSI, Audrey served as Co-CEO of Be Girl, a global social enterprise working in menstrual health in emerging markets. As Co-CEO, Audrey led the company’s business strategy, managed day-to-day operations, and raised equity investment and grant funds to drive growth. Audrey brings a background in global nonprofit programming focused on gender equity and adolescent girls’ development, with past expertise directing a gender and climate resilience initiative at Mercy Corps and overseeing Plan International’s portfolio of programs for adolescent girls.

Audrey has a Master’s degree from George Washington University and a Bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary. In her free time, she loves walking her dog or running in Rock Creek Park in DC.

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Master Class: Business Unusual