New app raises £1m to "democratise access to sex therapy"

A sex therapy app called Blueheart has raised £1m of seed funding with investors won over by its pitch to offer digital counselling to “improve the sex lives of 100m people”.

The therapy is designed for people who either do not want to, or cannot afford to, talk to a real person. Sessions are done digitally via audio and written materials and, at the moment, are for women in relationships experiencing low libido.

Sachin Raoul, Blueheart cofounder and chief executive, said that despite it having proven results, sex therapy is “unaffordable for most people” and there is little out there by the way of a purely digital offering. “That’s the gap Blueheart is bridging,” he said.

“We’re bringing something truly pioneering to the market and aiming to transform how we talk about and engage with the topic of sex in the process,” he said. “Our ambition is to improve the sex lives of 100m people.”

Rogan Angelini-Hurll, general partner at PROfounders Capital, which was one of the seed investors in the £1m round said: “There’s a lot of noise in the wellness and ‘self-improvement’ market, but very few offerings focus on evidence-based solutions which match the efficacy of in-person therapy.”

He added: “What really excited us was that Blueheart caters for an enormous but invisible market which isn’t being served by anyone else.”

Lucanus Polagnoli, cofounder of the other investor Calm/Storm Ventures said: “Blueheart was one of our easiest investment decisions. Digitising a proven methodology to tackle a global health crisis is compelling.” He added that he wanted to “make sex therapy affordable, taboo-free and accessible globally.”

The app was launched in beta phase last year and has already attracted several thousand users, said the company on Monday. It added that funding will be used to expand the available suite of therapy sessions as well as the app’s “AI capabilities”.