Pitch Practice | Emi - Tessering Biosciences

​A Pitch Practice is a one-hour session where you can share feedback and advice to a Social Innovator on how to improve their pitching skills.

​For decades, a safer, low-side-effect birth control option sat unused ,not because it didn’t work, but because no one did the work to bring it forward. Emi Gacaj is changing that. Emi Gacaj is the co-founder of a groundbreaking startup launched in 2024, aiming to reinvent access to contraception. Together with her co-founder Mahek, she discovered a clinically validated compound used in India for over 30 years, loved by patients but never introduced globally due to missing patent protections and lack of funding.

​But for Emi, this isn’t just a business; it’s personal. A trained birth doula and sex educator, she’s spent years listening to the frustrations and pain women experience with birth control. “I talk to people every day about how broken the system is,” she says. When Mahek, who is Indian, found the drug in a public health course and realized how overlooked it was, they both knew they had to act. Since founding their company, Emi has helped build a lean but mighty team, including world-class chemist Dr. Robert Hilgorth (former Director of Medicinal Chemistry at MIT and Harvard), to lead their R&D. They’ve identified a viable route to re-engineer the drug for IP protection, paving a clear path to FDA approval by 2026. They’ve already secured a lead investor and are raising $2M to fund their next phase.