Divya Pahwa

Leave a comment July 27, 2013 Divya Pahwa

Originally posted on: The Founder Project

The Founder Project hosted their first demo day at the Notman House here in Montreal earlier this month. With 7 startups vying for a year of hosting services from softlayer, an entry to the startup program of Fasken Martineau, office space at the Notman house, and a chance to pitch at FounderFuel’s demo day on July 11th.

Each team had 6 minutes to pitch. But it wasn’t exactly a pitch event. The judging took into account the pitch and how much progress the startup made since April 1, 2013 (the deadline for applications).

These are the teams that won:

First place: Outpost, is “the centerpoint of the sharing economy.” Outpost aggregates non-commercial websites that facilitate travel. It’s a sharing economy amalgamation site. Check it out for yourself: outpost.travel

Second place: Needle, is out to fill a void, where employers can scope out high quality creative talent and give creative talent a platform to meet employers. Check it: needlehr.com

Third place: Plotly, allows you to create the most beautiful graphs on the net in the easiest possible way. They’re here: plot.ly

1 Comment May 9, 2013 Divya Pahwa

Are condom advertisements targeting widowed Kenyan women?

I recently used the Kenya Demographic Health Survey (a nationally representative data set) and ran some numbers to see how condom marketing influences use amongst women. The findings were pretty bizarre. I was just interested to see if condom marketing actually translates in to condom use. As I was finishing up my study the Kenyan government put out this interesting condom commercial that was censored almost immediately.

Here’s what I found:

Women, who are widowed, divorced, or not living with their partner and who were exposed to condom messaging in magazines had significantly greater odds of using condoms as a current form of contraception. Exposure to condom advertising on the radio, T.V, and billboards had no significant effects. This study uses a sub-sample of 4 155 Kenyan women who have been sexually active in the past four weeks. Don’t take this at face value though, have a read through my data, definition, and methods (and because this is super academicy, since I wrote it for university, skip to the tables and jump to “explanation of the numbers” : p ).