Kasha Spotlight // Empowering Women’s Health & Self-Care

Kasha is one of the leading eCommerce Platforms for Women’s Health & Self-Care Built for Emerging Markets.

Women play a major role in ensuring that society functions well. Joanna Bichsel founded Kasha after she gave birth to her daughter. Her experience inspired her to start this venture so as to transform women’s lives and improve their living standards.

A woman goes through many phases that each demands so much from her before she gives birth, while she is pregnant and even after childbirth, whether or not she is keen on childbearing being a woman comes with a fair share of challenges and she requires proper support in order to have smooth transitions. 

Kasha aims to make it easy for women in emerging markets to get health and personal care products that they need and want, to give them great experiences, quality, and affordable products. They aim to reach out to every woman to empower them with information and solutions so that they take charge of their lives. 

As an eCommerce platform, Kasha works closely with various partners such as manufacturers, health organizations and corporate partners to deliver women health and personal care products at their beck and call. They are keen on disrupting how health and personal care products are being accessed. Kasha started off in Rwanda five years ago and are rapidly widening their scope with their launch in Kenya. 

Why Kasha?

In the competitive eCommerce world, Kasha has managed to craft their own niche that has given them a competitive advantage. They reach both tech-savvy kinds of people through their website, toll-free services through Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) where their consumers can engage with them at a personal level through the contact centre and constantly making research-based marketing decisions.  As opposed to other eCommerce platforms that mainly do dropship, Kasha stocks all the products they sell on their website, in their warehouse. This ensures that they provide a fully-fledged supply chain unit and quality assurance. 

Kasha has a nurse chat where customers can chat with a professional nurse who offers personalized consultancy services. They ensure that their customers enjoy convenience as they are able to get access to a medical practitioner at their comfort. 

Sailing Through A Global Pandemic

When the global pandemic hit they managed to quickly adapt to the new way of doing things, one of the ways they stayed afloat was to adopt the working from the home routine that has helped businesses to drastically reduce overhead costs. Kasha is keen to observe the guidelines provided so as to beat covid-19 and they ensure that their riders are always masked up to protect both themselves and the customers.

“The pandemic sort of benefited the business because more people moved to eCommerce as opposed to the physical stores. To some extent when people were scared of moving up and about, women were able to rely on us to supply their basic needs,” said Tracey Gachie- Regional Social Media & Events Manager, Kasha.

Celebrating 5 years

It has been an exciting time for Kasha as they recently celebrated their 5th year anniversary on the 3rd of July 2021. The event took place at Nyama Mama in Westlands, it was organized for the staff members to celebrate with the founders of the company. They had a session where members who attended introduced themselves, then speeches from the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Managing Director (MD) in Rwanda, Director of Supply chain and the Chief Executive Officer. The team had an interesting session where they cut the cake and celebrated with their colleagues.

“Kasha is a unique place because they are keen on ensuring that every staff member grows in their own capacity.” Said Tracey Gachie.

Kasha’s airplane is ready to take off to the next level of the business. The future looks bright for Kasha as they plan to grow and enter more emerging markets. They have a growth strategy put in place and are working smart to ensure that they get to achieve their vision.

Coworking Experience

“Personally, I love the space because it has a great ambience and it is well aerated. I am able to focus and do a lot of work. My only challenge during times like July is the cold. I love the bottomless tea and the fact that water is there so I never have to follow up with anyone. It is quite an enabling workspace.” concluded Rachel Kibanga, Senior Customer Service Manager at Kasha.