Laura Modi, CEO and Mom, one of the largest duopoles in the market breaks

Laura Modi, co -founder and CEO of Infant Formula Startup Bobbie, is on the mission to change an industry that has been stagnating for decades and the culture is changing how parents feed their babies.

Modi, a former Airbnb manager, had the idea for Bobbie after the birth of her first child.

“I remember that I went to a pharmacy that bought and hoped to give me a bag that I couldn’t see through because I made myself so embarrassed that the product that I bought was so embarrassed,” Modi recalls in a new episode of the “CNBC Changemakers and Power Players” podcast.

Modi was appointed to the first CNBC Changemakers list in 2024.

It was not only the emotional aspects of consumer transaction that motivated Modi, but also the fact that the product itself was an indication of a market -resistant change.

“Muesli bars have changed, bags from chips, lemonades, but still a product that was as important as the infant formula was still the same as what I had 40 years earlier,” says Modi.

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Infant food is a large market and a classic example of a market where, according to Modi, the incumbents were not stimulated by the competition for innovations.

A report by the Federal Trade Commission in 2022, when a nationwide lack of formula occurred, showed the risks of what was long seen as a duopoly market. The two companies that dominate the production of infants in the United States are stretching and Abbott, with a combined market share based on state contracts in 2022 to almost 70% (which is due to over 80% in 2008). The market share becomes even higher when the sales of non -regulation sales are included. According to Nielsen data, the combined market share of Abbott and Reckitt is 86%.

Nestle and Perrigo were also prominent Formula provider Perrigo bought Nestles Formula business in the USA and Canada in 2022 and has a joint production with bobbie.

After a recall that led to a new focus on the market concentration risk, it was established after a recall of Abbott’s formula.

“I think we have all accepted for a goods. It is an infant formula. It should simply be available,” says Modi. “When the president said: ‘America can’t feed babies’,’ you start to unpack it.”

Bobbie, which Modi founded in 2018, quickly focused on the product quality-Bobbie presented the first and only USDA-organic milk-strange formula to be produced in the USA-and a business philosophy oriented with mission, including a campaign that is committed to celebrities for paid family vacation.

“Don’t sell the product,” says Modi about the marketing message. “Fight for paid vacation and at the end of the segment or at the end of the advertisement, why you do not set a phone number to get people to call their representatives so that they can explain why paid vacation is needed, why we have to fight for the black mothers.

Bobbie’s first products were the first direct-to-consumer use of use in the USA in 2021 and are now available from Target to Costco to Whole Foods.

The execution of a social mission is not without being moved into politics. Modi was recently at the end of the setbacks of some customers after she had joined some of the largest manufacturers of the government organized by the government at a federal round table and with a controversial secretary for health and human services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Yes, it is that the current administration is equipped with some polarizing perspectives, and when I received the call to say that they are invited to a roundtable conversation in the future of their industry, and the rest of the CEOs of the infant formula, which all people become men, are also the language. In this table,” says Modi CNBC. “The general intention is to improve the industry, regardless of who is in the seat.”

The compensation of the advocacy representation with the realities of the startup and the upbringing of four children requires discipline. Modi says she relies on a nightly “personal and professional check-in”, which from her evaluation consists of her day on a scale from one to five. She also tells CNBC about the pretty “strict” common calendar that the family considers for each member.

In an industry in which the resilience of the supply chain became an important national news story, Modi remains associated with its greatest challenge. Bobbie began the production of Formula in a large manufacturing plant in Ohio, which it built from scratch last year. According to the modes, a Move modes is of crucial importance for security and stability.

“The biggest challenge is that this is a heavily regulated, really pharmaceutical product, and although in many ways it is a product packaging product product on the shelf, you cannot go into a shop and find another product that is essentially the alternative to something that makes human body sole nutrition for the youngest audience,” she says. “We have moved very quickly, these have become the fastest growing company for children’s formula. This is a decade of care, the security of security, the quality of it, continues to invest in them.”

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