Varsha Venugopal

I think even once you've gone through the process, you may have several avenues to explore.

Yes.

And that's, I think, being a big part of the plus feeling that you're not alone and doing this all by yourself, which can be quite common within entrepreneurs.

And they offer not just mentors that I regularly talk to, such as Patrick, who's director of their communications.

But we also have these Slack channels where we discuss operational challenges regularly.

and other areas, for instance, registration in the UK, which is a standard challenge for several nonprofits.

So they have found an organization to provide legal advice pro bono for all of us.

So there is some economy of scale in operation, which helps all of us by being in touch and by continuing to be in touch with CE.

I would say if you were to take the quiz and you were already inclined to consider this as an option, you should just go ahead and apply.

So while going through the charity incubation process, we got close to Charity Science Health, which was focused on SMS reminders to improve uptake of routine immunization in India.

And while we were following this evidence base for immunization uptake, I think both of our organizations independently concluded that a combination of SMS reminders and ambassadors was the most cost-effective and impactful.

So as a result, it seemed fairly logical for us

thinking of scaling up to join forces so we could build on the infrastructure CSH already had, including some of these government partnerships, and we could also jumpstart the ambassador program.

I think while we were considering the promisingness of the program, in addition to the evidence and the outstanding cost effectiveness from the tractability perspective, the authors had just won the Nobel Prize, which means...

made it all quite exciting.

So I think we decided that it made most rational sense for us to merge as an organization.

And Kat and Eric, who were leading the organization at the time, are still very involved and are advising us.

And they have moved on to other impactful things.

Kat's now with the World Bank and Eric is working with Michael Kremer at the University of Chicago.

So maybe another data point for people considering the entrepreneurship track that one could then move on to