People say that starting and growing a company is like giving birth and raising a child. For NwaBebé co-founders and Longhorns Dara Chike-Obi (Law ’08, McCombs ’20) and Cockrell School of Engineering associate professor Lydia Contreras, entrepreneurship and motherhood are indeed inextricably tied. “The initial inspiration for NwaBebé was our journey into parenthood,” Chike-Obi says.
NwaBebé is a dynamic baby bottle system that goes beyond nutritional delivery and helps parents and their infants get the most of the 5- to 7-hour-a-day feeding routine by nurturing cognitive and emotional development.
“The first year of motherhood is TOUGH, and the main driver of stress can be found in the all-encompassing infant feeding routine,” says Contreras. With newborns, growth is the clearest indication of health. So, while infants spend an average of 5 to 7 hours a day feeding, new parents are constantly tracking and looking for numerous signs of development. “We soon realized that this type of time, emotional and mental commitment was a shared stressor for many new parents and wanted innovations that helped better capitalize on that time for everyone,” she says.
