[authors: Adriana Ortiz and Sujay Suresh Kumar]
Co-founders and co-CEOs Adriana C. Ortiz and Sujay Suresh Kumar of Lilu are on a mission to make postpartum care more comfortable, efficient, and pain-free. Read about their 8-year journey and what's next, and why male leadership in the women's health space is important.
Breast pumping is…
Motherhood, for all its beauty, can be a fiercely demanding journey. One quick look at the top searches for breast pumping on Google will tell you what the reality of pumping is like for most new mothers. Long nights, aching bodies, the pressure to "bounce back." All this — while knowing there's a little human solely depending on you for sustenance — can make the postpartum experience one of the hardest things a woman will ever do in her life.
Enter Lilu — a company that builds smart tech products to make postpartum care more comfortable, efficient, and pain-free.
Lilu's story, like many in the women's health space, began with an unmet need. "We saw a gap in the market and, more importantly, a gap in the support system for new mothers," share Sujay Suresh Kumar and Adriana C. Vaźquez, Lilu's co-founders and co-CEOs. "Our mission is to redefine every mother's breastfeeding and pumping journey so that the joy of motherhood isn't overshadowed by pain and discomfort."
What ignited Lilu's now eight-year-long journey?
"Sujay and I were working on a capstone project for a robotics class at UPenn. We had stumbled upon our shared passion for women's health and had conceived an idea to use soft robotics to mimic expert recommended compression motions to help moms pump comfortably and efficiently," shares Adriana.
They designed a survey and shared it on a Facebook group to get input from real moms to help shape this idea. To their surprise, the survey went viral overnight with more than 600 moms sharing paragraph after paragraph about everything not working for them in their pumping journey. Some comments, like "the way [my pump] tugs on my nipples makes me feel like a milk cow," were heartbreaking reminders of how outdated breast pumping technology is.
For Sujay and Adriana, this was staggering but unsurprising.
Adriana had, by this point, seen many of her colleagues struggle to make breastfeeding work. She remembers a particular incident that stands out — a seemingly inconsequential moment where a mom she worked with accidentally disposed of her stored breast milk. "I can still recall how distraught she was once she realized what had happened," reflects Adriana. "It made me realize the emotional toll breastfeeding can take, how tough it is, how every drop matters."
"And once you realize how rich breast milk is in health benefits, you would not want a single drop to go to waste," says Sujay, who spent large parts of his childhood battling one health crisis after the other. "Years later, when I learned that breastmilk can help prevent many of the diseases I suffered from as a child, I wanted to do all I could to make the breastfeeding process easier for moms. So many moms want to breastfeed but are simply unable to sustain it. That was unacceptable to us."
So, in 2016, in a robotics class at the University of Pennsylvania, these founders came together to bring Lilu to life.
Lilu was born into a perfect storm.
From the very first day, Sujay and Adriana faced a trifecta of challenges: limited funding for women's health start-ups, the capital-intensive nature of developing a hardware product, and the very complex regulatory landscape for introducing new medical devices.
While raising funds from traditional VCs was hard, the team was very resourceful. They tapped all the other resources they could find, including accelerator programs, awards, and government grants, like the National Science Foundation (NSF), which supported Lilu from its early days. To date, the company has raised over $3M in funding from investors and through grants.
But funding alone isn't enough to build a successful company.
"It takes a village," smiles Sujay, "To raise a baby, but also a company. Adriana and I were lucky — we had a thriving village."
Lilu was a community-first company. From its inception, there was a big focus on building a strong network of advisors, from neonatologists, doulas, lactation experts, engineers, and most importantly, mothers themselves.
"The moms who were our early adopters became our biggest champions," shares Adriana. "It was the biggest validation we could get. In fact, a few moms went from being customers to being part of the Lilu team!"
What went into building the Lilu team?
"In one word — diversity," Sujay tells us. "The only way to make sure you're addressing the needs of many is to ensure diversity in the room where decisions are being made."
"And to us, that meant diversity in gender, too," adds Adriana.
But how did people react to having a man in a leadership position at a women's health company?
"If I had a penny for every time someone asked me what I'm doing at Lilu, we would never need to fundraise again," laughs Sujay. He continues, "It's a legitimate question, but we have always, from the first day, advocated for greater male involvement in the women's health space."
Why is that important?
"Lilu will always focus on creating products for women. We will continue to be fueled by female needs and will continue to bring in women to conceptualize, design, and test the products. But men as allies are crucial," shares Adriana.
"The idea is to normalize making this space a priority for all," emphasizes Sujay.
Talking of growth, what's Lilu's vision for the future?
"When we started, we focused on addressing the physical challenges of breastfeeding, especially around low milk supply" shares Sujay. "But as we spent more and more time in this space, talking to more mothers, we realized that it's only a piece of the puzzle."
The other piece of the puzzle is the mental and emotional side of postpartum care.
"Postpartum mood disorders affect over 40% of new moms," says Adriana. "To truly make a dent in this space, we need to take a more integrated approach that solves both the physical and the mental challenges around breastfeeding."
And Sujay agrees: "We're imagining a world where the narrative for moms around the globe is different…where some of the hardest things moms will ever do become easier and more sustainable. We want to help moms continue to provide milk for their babies as long as they want to, while also caring for their own selves."
Now, that's a vision to which we can raise a glass — or a sippy cup — no judgments!
So, what lies ahead for Lilu?
"We have an exciting product roadmap," shares Sujay. "We're currently developing two exciting and complementary product lines — Omni, the ultimate wearable breast pump that integrates our patented breast massage tech to help moms pump more comfortably and efficiently, and secondly, the MilkSense App, a lactation tracking mobile app and smart sensor to help moms keep track of their breastfeeding, pumping, and bottle-feeding sessions and offer them peace of mind, knowing that their babies are getting enough milk."
And they continue to receive support from the National Science Foundation, having been awarded the prestigious SBIR award.
"We have a big vision," adds Adriana. "We also have an incredibly talented team of engineers, marketers, and operators, and funding support from the NSF and other big names in VC like L'ATTITUDE Ventures, SOSV, and Crescent Ridge Partners. This sets us up to become a leader in the maternal health space."
How can we help?
"We are currently looking to grow our advisory team by onboarding to Lilu's Board of Directors people with strong expertise and experience in women's health, health tech, and consumer tech industries. You can learn more by writing to us, Sujay and Adriana, at founders@wearlilu.com."
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