We built Super Abbu — a speech-based maternal health platform reaching expectant fathers across rural Pakistan. No smartphone required. Backed by UNICEF and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
First 71 days of operation
Pakistan holds one of the highest neonatal mortality rates in the world — 44.2 deaths per 1,000 live births, accounting for 7% of all neonatal deaths globally. Maternal mortality sits at 178 per 100,000, among the worst in the region.
Decades of intervention have shared a systemic blind spot: the entire public health infrastructure addresses women, while fathers remain the primary household decision-makers. With low smartphone penetration and high illiteracy rates in rural Punjab, conventional digital tools simply don't reach who they need to reach.
Super Abbu was engineered to work within these constraints — not around them.
"There is a lot of research that shows that male partner involvement in pregnancy and childbirth improves health outcomes for both mother and child. Leaving out the key decision-maker of this life-changing process can impact nutrition for both mother and child."— Prof. Mustafa Naseem, University of Michigan School of Information
Every number below was recorded in real-world operation. These outcomes directly informed a province-wide randomized control trial funded by the NIH.
Total time users spent with health content in the first 71 days — sustained engagement, not passive impressions.
Gynecologists, pediatricians, and GPs each answering up to 100 questions weekly — a credible, scalable pipeline.
Acquired via robocall outreach to government health program beneficiaries — the most cost-effective channel identified.
By doubling server-side call capacity, the platform could reach 60,000 users in under six months without additional spend.
Any basic phone works. Designed for users with no internet access and no reading ability — zero barriers to entry.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health backed a province-wide randomized control trial, validating the model for broader replication.
Built to serve illiterate, low-income users on basic phones — while remaining robust enough for province-wide deployment.
Any expectant father calls the Super Abbu hotline from any basic phone. No app, no data plan, no literacy required. The IVR system greets them in Urdu.
Callers submit a health question by voice, or browse the community Q&A — listening to anonymized questions and expert answers from other fathers.
Questions are screened and routed to verified doctors. Sensitive or urgent cases are flagged for priority response.
A voice actor records each doctor's response. Callers retrieve their answer on the next call — no callbacks, no complexity.
We build fast by choosing proven tools and using them well. Our stack is lean, production-hardened, and scales without surprises.
Global CDN, DDoS protection, and serverless Workers. Performance and resilience baked in at the network level.
Open-source Postgres backend with real-time capabilities and row-level security. No proprietary lock-in.
Component-driven architecture for dashboards and interfaces. Maintainable codebases with a world-class ecosystem.
Utility-first CSS that eliminates style bloat and ships consistent, precise UI quickly — without fighting a stylesheet.
Super Abbu received investment from the UNICEF Innovation Ventures fund, validating the model as a scalable, replicable public health platform for the developing world.
NIH Fogarty International Center awarded a grant for a province-wide randomized control trial in Punjab — one of the most rigorous evaluation standards in public health.
Jointly developed with researchers across three universities, with ongoing academic partnership and peer-reviewed documentation of outcomes.
We build high-performance platforms for organizations with real problems to solve. If the work is worthwhile, we want to hear about it.