Femtechs have historically struggled to garner investor backing. Even in a sector focused on female health, with a potential market size of half the world's population, it appears to still pay to be the man; male femtech founders raised more money than their female counterparts in each of the last five years, according to data from PitchBook.
Overall funding seems to be moving in the right direction for the sector. Last year, Europe’s femtechs raised $170m from investors, according to Dealroom. Though that was a $36m dip from the year before, many sectors across the continent struggled to match the funding they raised in 2021 and 2022. Compared to 2020’s $62.8m, however, investment in the sector has more than doubled.
The UK is a hotbed for the sector: more than a third (36%) of 2023’s funding went to startups based in the country. Almost two thirds of that total came from Peppy, a menopause and fertility-focused startup, which closed a $45m Series B round at the start of the year. It was also Europe’s biggest femtech raise of the year, according to Dealroom.
So which femtech startups could be next? Here are some on Calm/Storm and Speedinvest’s watchlists.
Carina Roth, investment manager at Calm/Storm
Calm/Storm invests in pre-seed and seed-stage founders who are tackling taboos across life, health and wellbeing.
Flutter — UK
Flutter advocates for pleasure as a non-negotiable aspect of women's lives. Leveraging AI and health-data tracking, it encourages women to track their sex lives on the app and then uses that data to offer personalised insights to enhance their sexual experiences. The app is currently in its beta launch.
Ovom — Germany
Ovom offers a digital-first fertility clinic that combines real physicians with AI technology. The AI can offer services like personalising the ideal healthcare path for each user to reduce the number of treatment cycles needed, a prediction algorithm to estimate the likelihood of pregnancy across different treatment pathways and computer vision software to select the most viable eggs and sperm samples.
Thyia — UK
One in three women skip smear tests in the UK, contributing to increasing cervical cancer rates. Despite being a preventable cancer, low screening rates persist due to feelings of embarrassment, anxiety and challenges in booking appointments. In response, Thyia has launched a digital health platform featuring easy-to-use self-test screening kits, quick results, personalised communication and data analytics for healthcare providers.
Uvisa Health — Denmark
Uvisa tackles the prevalent issue of vaginal infections and thrush, which affects around 75% of women at some point in their life. It has developed an insertable medical device that uses therapeutic light treatment to cure infections without the need for medication.
SheSpot — UK
SheSpot is addressing the underserved realm of women's sexual health. Its e-commerce store offers a carefully curated selection of sexual pleasure and wellness products. Every product has to meet SheSpot’s stringent criteria for safety, sustainability and expert recommendations.
Daria Gherghelas, associate at Speedinvest
Speedinvest is an Austrian VC investing across Europe, mostly at seed stage. Gherghelas is part of the firm’s health and techbio investment team.
Cirqle Biomedical — Denmark
There has been little innovation in contraception since the introduction of oral birth control over 60 years ago. Cirqle Biomedical wants to improve contraception with its hormone-free product designed to strengthen the natural cervical mucus barrier, offering on-demand and hormone-free birth control.
Wawa Fertility — Denmark
Wawa Fertility is building the infrastructure for fertility clinics to engage their patients better and improve healthcare outcomes. Its platform integrates directly into electronic health records systems and automates manual processes such as payments and consent management. The patient-facing app supports women undergoing fertility treatments and provides a direct line of communication with clinicians.
Numi — France
Many women face challenges with breastfeeding or simply choose not to. But there are limited breast milk alternatives on the market. Numi offers parents a substitute when breastfeeding isn't an option, by aiming to recreate the benefits of natural breast milk through cell cultivation in vitro, which is when cultivation happens outside of a living organism. The engineered milk includes all of the nutrients and proteins present in real breast milk.
