In her home in Nairobi, Kenya, Sheila Minayo’s shelves brim with baby essentials. Formula and bottles. Diapers, rattles, and spoons. Her space is laden with the items parents need to keep their children safe and well.   

For new mothers, choosing the right products can be a difficult and daunting task, especially in those high-stress, early days of parenthood with a new baby. It certainly was for Sheila, who struggled to find items for her daughter at a reasonable price and with trustworthy guidance.  

“It was a bit overwhelming,” Sheila explained of her early days of motherhood. “I had to look for friends to help source quality products that were not available locally.” 

Inspired by this experience, Sheila decided to launch Bundles and Snuggles, an online baby and parenting brand offering high-quality, affordable essentials to new parents in Nairobi.   

But as a one-woman enterprise, Sheila would contend with customer inquiries and order requests across multiple platforms, like Facebook and Instagram. As her business grew, it became difficult to keep track of alerts from these disparate channels, and missed messages led to missed orders — and missed income.   

That’s where Flowcart (formerly called SUKHIBA), an Accion Ventures portfolio company, came in. With investment support from Accion Ventures, Flowcart’s AI-powered conversational commerce platform streamlines sales in a manner that meets customers where they are: on WhatsApp. Today, Sheila manages sales, customer chats, inventory, and payments all in one place. And for customers, orders now take an average of one minute.  

“Being able to fulfill an order from start to finish on just one platform without being redirected elsewhere is very important for busy clients like moms,” Sheila said. “The number one improvement is there are no missed deadlines, no missed orders.”   

For small businesses like Sheila’s, which form the backbone of Africa’s labor market and the broader economy, reducing order delays and time spent managing inventory are key to building resilient and thriving enterprises. Flowcart’s seamless intervention removes friction from commerce for consumers and merchants alike, lowering barriers to transact and leading to higher conversion rates for businesses like Bundles and Snuggles. To date, over one million customers have now completed a checkout directly inside WhatsApp using Flowcart. 

With her business expanding, Sheila recently purchased a motorbike and employed her cousin, Daniel, to help with deliveries and logistics. Running her business online allows her to spend more time with her now five-year-old daughter, Amakove. “I consider Bundles and Snuggles a family business,” she says. “It gives me flexibility to be a present parent while supporting my family.”   

Around the world, women entrepreneurs like Sheila are powerful drivers of progress. Women own roughly one-third of small and medium enterprises in emerging markets, yet they continue to face huge barriers to accessing and utilizing financing and digital tools. When those barriers fall, the benefits ripple outward, to families, communities, and local economies.  

For Sheila, these benefits are more than sales; they’re also a shared sense of community. “We have built this strong social online network for moms, providing tips on new motherhood and product information,” she said. “It often makes moms feel comfortable. For us, it’s important building the community.”  

Every day, Accion and our partners work to provide women entrepreneurs with a safe place to save their money, insurance to grow resilience, and the necessary tools to make informed decisions and secure their economic well-being.