Beauty Health and Wellness – Dutch Uncles

How The Man Company Improved its Store Searchability and Brought More Repeat Businesses

Shalmoli Sarkar — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 08:35:17 +0000

Tired of the rough, frizzy, and slow growth of beard hair, the husband goes to Google to search for products that can aid his beard growth. The search results left him scratching his head since there were no such products. Sadly, what he ordered next was a tub of Loreal’Paris Hair Spa specially designed for women’s hair and somewhat was close to serving his concern of frizzy beard hair.

Another hilarious incident happened when a sister found her acne cream tube empty only to find that her brother was using the same secretly.

The incidents mentioned above are not rare. There will be a myriad of products from numerous brands for almost every skin and hair concern for women but there is a handful for men. The Indian TV showcases plenty of commercials showcasing women’s grooming products right from lightening the skin tone to the removal of pimples to age reversal through the skin while the men over the years are consoled with shaving razors giving minimum cuts.

Grooming products catering to men largely come from the generic healthcare and women’s grooming brands and the options have been limited to date. Realising this to be an opportunity three friends Parvesh Bareja, Hitesh Dhingra, and Bhisham Bhateja founded The Man Company in 2015. The Man Company is an online exclusive men’s grooming essentials startup that covers a “head-to-toe” range of men’s grooming products starting from hair, face, body, and bath, beard, shaving, skincare, and fragrances infused with essential oils. The products are SLS, paraben-free, and free of chemicals that in general are found in personal care and grooming products harming the hair and skin.

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Grooming products catering to men largely come from the generic healthcare and women’s grooming brands and the options have been limited to date.

The Man Company – becoming a digitally native brand with Shopify

The Man Company decided to cater to the millennial user base of 26-35 aged men. This millennial user base is digital natives who have witnessed the emergence of new technologies and gadgets and how it has simplified the lives of people, making them firm believers of it. This led the startup to envision as a digitally native brand and decided to use Canadian e-commerce enabler Shopify to build its online store. Within two weeks The Man Company had its digital storefront up and running.

The Man Company’s search problem

That one pocket in your pants or trousers might not have a wallet but will certainly have a smartphone. Be it finding the new meaning of a word or finding a new cafe the first step we take is to search. When The Man Company wanted to launch its store online, it wanted the brand’s searchability to be high. It wanted to enhance its customer shopping experience to bring more conversions in its Shopify store with a powerful site search.

How SearchTap helped with a powerful site search

SearchTap is a subscription-based hosted search solution that enhances brand searchability for users on mobile devices as desktops and tablets. This feature is compatible with businesses whose digital storefront is built on Shopify. The product images, filters, and product descriptions are all search optimised and presents in mobile responsive layouts to increase user engagement and conversions.

It has features like search-as-you-type, location-based results multiple language support, and relevance customization. In addition to this, the search platform also comes with an “All in one” integrated dashboard that extracts inferences from user behaviour and search trends history to show businesses the whole story that lives within the search data.

The Man Company wanted to give unique look to the search box and results page on desktop and mobile. This integration made the search bar easily accessible for visitors who came to the digital store. It made the search highly customisable based on concerns, product type, collections, etc., and gave the freedom to add as many filters as possible on the website. With every search, the website showed products with detailed information of their products further offering a smooth buying experience to the buyers. SearchTap’s superior language modelling ensured that the users can see relevant results from the first letter typed. Its search-as-you-type technology also delivered search results at a lightning speed making the search experience even more seamless.

If any customer mistakenly typed something that is not offered by The Man Company, the SearchTap powered website instead of displaying a blank page it showed popular categories. This meant that these users could further interact with the site and might find something else that they like.

The search analytics from SearchTap aided the startup to know about popular and zero-result search terms that can be further used to make the website content more search-friendly.

SearchTap’s enhanced mobile search experience led to a 26 percent surge in search-led revenue of The Man Company and a 43 percent increase in transactions by search users. The startups experienced a 36 percent growth in Mobile Search Users and a 13 percent increase in Mobile Conversion Rate.

Boosting loyalty and repeat purchases

The Man Company received thousands of orders in a single day but at the same time, it found a significant number of cart withdrawals and cancellations due to various reasons. This is when the startup thought to build consumer loyalty and bring repeat purchases on the platform by building a store credit system as soon as the customers placed an order.

They categorised their customers based on their interaction with the brand and thought of gamifying the rewards and loyalty programme. They wanted to create an interactive customer account page with added features to enable customer loyalty, gamify experiences and drive more repeat purchases. For this, The Man Company integrated its store with Flits, a customer account page that is available as an app on Shopify’s app store. The app summarises all shopper data like profile, order history, recently viewed products, and delivery addresses in one place.

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The Man Company received thousands of orders in a single day but at the same time, it found a significant number of cart withdrawals and cancellations due to various reasons.

Setting up the customer loyalty programme with the Flits app

The Man Company designed a tiered rewards programme wherein customers would receive credits only after the order was successfully fulfilled. If the customer cancels/ returns the purchase they make, the store credits would be automatically revoked. The Flits app was integrated with Shopify Flow to give a tier-based rewards program and customisations to the customer account page were made. They built a system to adjust the store credits of customers who cancelled or returned orders that enabled the brand to save on losses that they could have incurred due to high disbursement of rewards and an equally high return/ cancellation rate.

They also renamed the rewards programme ‘The Man Wallet’ using the multi-language feature of the Flits app. This helped the brand to personalise the rewards programme and also bring it along with the same lines as the overall customer account page experience.

The introduction of store credits in customer account pages to boost repeat purchases resulted in a 41 percent increase in orders using store credits, a 91 percent increase in average order value with store credit, and a massive 327 percent increase in store credit spend in the lockdown.

What can the businesses learn from The Man Company?

Instead of investing in various engagement strategies on the website, it simply introduced a loyalty programme to gamify the experience of shoppers. Its tiered rewards programme on its Shopify store kept its customers coming back to the store more resulting in higher customer retention rates and a surge in sales.

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Good Glamm- A D2C Beauty and Personal Care Brand Becoming India’s 35th Unicorn in 2021

Shalmoli Sarkar — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 13:30:08 +0000

The months of April-May-June were a dry spell for revenues and was no exception to Good Glamm’s founder Darpan Sanghvi. The spell was more prolonged for beauty and personal care space as the outdoor consumption slowed down and selling non-essentials was paused as per the government regulations.
To stay afloat in the pandemic, MyGlamm forayed into the mom and pop stores and chemist shops in tier II-III markets where the reverse migration helped increase its sales, as people returned to shopping in physical stores faster in such cities. Till the festive season in 2020, MyGlamm’s profitability touched pre-COVID levels.

Coming to March 2021, MyGlamm became richer by Rs 175 crore and it became a $100 million valued company. But this D2C cosmetic company had other ambitious plans of becoming the next biggest new-age beauty and personal care company equally competing with brands like ITC, Dabur, HUL, and Loreal. From just being a D2C platform of beauty and cosmetic products it has emerged to be content to commerce company under the parent name Good Glamm that now houses multiple brands from maternity care -The Mom’s Co, to skincare to parenting platform -Babychakra to digital media platforms.

The becoming of Good Glamm- A content to commerce company in the personal care space

MyGlamm in the pandemic was encouraged to take bold steps in the expansion of business after witnessing the Chinese markets whose beauty products surged by 20 percent from the pandemic year. This led MyGlamm to invest and strengthen its online and offline storefronts and expand its product portfolio from cosmetics and make-up to skincare, haircare, hygiene, mom and baby, naturals and form an umbrella of brands by the name Good Glamm. It acquired those brands that have great statistics of repeat sales, are a good product-market fit but surprisingly have lower revenue generation from its website.

Good Glamm here saw a potential to form a symbiotic relationship with these already reputed D2C personal care brands that could be seamlessly aligned with its content-to-commerce strategy. The integration with Good Glamm will help the acquired D2C brands without an offline presence to leverage its network of 30,000 offline points. What might have taken years to singlehandedly build a brand will now be benefitting from Good Glamm’s network and start selling products nationwide thereby eventually reducing the cost of building a brand.

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From just being a D2C platform of beauty and cosmetic products it has emerged to be content to commerce company under the parent name Good Glamm.

Acquiring the digital media and lifestyle companies

The intent of acquiring digital media and lifestyle content platforms is to allow users to consume content and urge them to make a transaction on the platform. Human beings tend to buy what they see. Thereby, by creating branded content on these entertainment and lifestyle platforms it aims to push its products for sales utilising its already made massive fanbase. Pushing products through branded content gives high conversion rates. In August 2020, Good Glamm then MyGlamm acquired content and influencer marketing platforms POPxo and Plixxo that increased its reach exponentially amongst its female fan base consisting of 88 million and 1,50000 female influencers. Recently, in October 2021, Good Glamm has acquired ScoopWhoop which will continue to work independently but with an increased focus on its male fanbase which is 60 percent. This acquisition will pave its entry into content-to-commerce for the fast-growing male personal care segment.
Users consuming the kind of content on such platforms will help Good Glamm to decode the kind of content the users’ consumer using its improved data science and analytics capabilities and give clarity about the kind of products they will be interested to spend.

Good Glamm’s Funding and IPO Plans in 2023

Good Glamm aspires to be the next HUL owning an umbrella of brands offering everything in personal care under the same ecosystem. The funds raised from the investors will be utilised to invest in product development, support data science and technology research, increase offline expansion and working capital requirements.

Consecutively in September and October, Good Glamm raised funding of Rs 255 crore in series-C and Rs 1,110 crore in series-D respectively to join the unicorn family and become the 35th unicorn in 2021. By 2023, it is eyeing to release its IPO as soon as the company’s valuation reaches $10 billion.

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Mensa Brands Acquiring the Online D2C Brands the Thrasio Way

Shalmoli Sarkar — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 08:39:42 +0000

A conglomerate acquiring a significant stake in a D2C startup will not spark off as much discussion as compared to a 5 month old startup that acquires ten D2C consumer brands in a row. If you are a proud founder of a small online business, the idea of exiting will not begin to kick at the back of your mind. But the emergence of Thrasio-style startup Mensa Brands is speedily acquiring fast-growing digital-first brands and scaling their products.

What is the Thrasio- style of acquisition?

Founded in 2018, by Joshua Silberstein and Carlos Cashman Thrasio is a US startup that acquires successful third-party Amazon sellers to give the founders a profitable exit. Its team of experts today now manages a global portfolio of nearly 100 brands and is valued at $6 billion based on its latest funding round.

Witnessing Thrasio tasting success, Mensa Brands emulated a similar model. The startup founded by Ananth Narayanan, the former CEO of Myntra and cofounder of Medlife within a short span of 5 months since its inception has acquired 51 percent and 75 percent in several consumer brands such as Karagiri, Dennis Logo, Priyaasi, Ishin, Hubberholme, Anubhutee, Helea, and Villain, etc. with each venture’s average revenues worth $3-$4 million before acquisition. With these acquisitions, Mensa Brands aspires to become a tech-led house of brands.

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Thrasio is a US startup that acquires successful third-party Amazon sellers to give the founders a profitable exit.

Mensa Brands globalising the acquired D2C brands

Mensa brands are focused to acquire D2C brands from verticals of fashion and apparel, beauty and cosmetics, and soft-home furnishings that are capable to generate annual revenues between Rs 7 crore to Rs 70 crore. Through its team of experts wants to globalise the acquired D2C brands by leveraging their expertise in driving growth, product, merchandising, technology, supply chain, and access to global markets.

D2C brands in recent times have gained enormous popularity and profits amongst the neo-consumerist Indians who are willing to spend more on products and services that make their lives easier, more individual, and more controllable. Especially, in beauty products, customers are purchasing that has less sulphur and are vegan. D2C apparel sellers are becoming more size-inclusive for all shapes and sizes.

How Mensa plans to make the brands global

Mensa follows a three-step process to understand a brand’s potential.

First Step: Decoding the brand‘s journey both financially and qualitatively.

Second step: After thoroughly knowing the business, the second step includes coming up with a fair and transparent commercial construct.

Third step: It consists of carrying out due diligence and verification of financial statements, sales, costs, marketing, and supply chain. If Mensa is satisfied with the brand’s growth prospects, it attaches a valuation and undertakes the preparation of contracts and other paperwork to integrate the seller.

Soon after the brand undergoes integration process Mensa brings its expertise across various functions such as marketing, technology, supply chain, inventory management, logistics, and product development to scale the acquired brand rapidly. A part of the profits earned in the process is distributed to the startup founders.

Lastly, these Thrasio-style startups will thrive on acquiring profitable D2C brands, which can be a bright future since according to a study by Avendus Capital the D2C market is estimated to be $100 billion by 2025. But, this thing should be taken into consideration that although India has a huge retail market, people shopping from the online market is completely is yet in its infancy to bring huge economies of scale.

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Tech Revolution in the Beauty Sector – 5 Emerging Trends

Anju Nambiar — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 05:35:07 +0000

Consumers are becoming aware of their wellness needs. They understand that no single product or brand is the sure shot answer to their grooming needs. The tech revolution is sweeping across the beauty industry. With the pandemic having driven everyone indoors, beauty and wellness have drastically changed in skincare and cosmetic product requirements. For instance, an entire market has been created for ‘Maskne’ (mask acne) with companies coming up with new products and solutions to tackle this.

1. Virtual Try-On:

The virtual try-on tech trend leverages the Augmented Reality technology for make-up and hair colour in the professional beauty sector. Through this technology, customers can try on dozens of shades of make-up and hair colour. The virtual try-on technology uses an advanced face tracker algorithm that detects where customers’ lips, eyes, cheeks, hair, etc., are and applies virtual cosmetics on this zone to give them a real-time, true-to-life view of the products. Loreal India invested in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) by acquiring ModiFace to enhance their product and customer experience.

2. Webcam consultation

Webcam consultations are the latest consumer trends in the professional beauty sector which enhances the online shopping experience for customers through e-consultations and individualised skincare consultations. Kiehl’s India, a beauty and skincare brand rolled out one-on-one skin video consultations where skin experts interact with customers and give them insights on choosing the products that are the right fit for them.

3. Store Management

Modern beauty salons, skincare clinics, and even cosmetic stores are adopting store and salon management tech that are customised for beauty brands and businesses. Salon and store management technology encompasses accounting, payroll and financial reporting, inventory control, scheduling, and CRM (customer relationship management) software. Beauty businesses are tapping into these technologies to streamline workflows, manage clientele, and attract modern clients.

4. Skin Diagnostics

Skin Diagnostics is a tech trend in the beauty world which brands are leveraging for expert skin analysis. It’s an online tool based on AI driven by dermatologists that evaluates customer’s skin profile through a phone or computer camera. Skin diagnostics tech is built on massive volumes of data and developed on clinical atlases which can deliver tailor-made skincare routines for beauty customers. Indian personal beauty brand Skincraft performs skin analysis for customers by matching the answers received on a detailed questionnaire to regimen kits. This system relies on a data repository which creates a suite of ‘skin profiles’ for their algorithm. These skin profiles are then matched to appropriate products.

5. Interactive retail experience

MAC cosmetics had opened its first ever ‘phygital’ experience centre in Shanghai. Aimed at understanding GenZ’s make-up purchase behaviour, the retail store was equipped with technology like cognitive walkthroughs, virtual makeup mirrors, and infrared touchscreens. Although this concept store trend was first kicked off by MAC in Shanghai, it will surely catch on and eventually seep into the small business sector in India in the near future.

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The virtual try-on technology uses an advanced face tracker algorithm that detects where customers’ lips, eyes, cheeks, hair, etc., are and applies virtual cosmetics on this zone to give them a real-time, true-to-life view of the products.

What’s in it for me?

Beauty product recommendation is being left to Artificial Intelligence in the beauty industry. This is not only eliminating expensive dermatologist visits but also paving the way for start-ups to innovate and disrupt the beauty space with technology. Technologies like Machine Learning and AI have penetrated the beauty and cosmetics industry.

Beauty brands are using technology to bring about a makeover in the market by delivering tailor-made products and forever upending the beauty industry’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ standard. The beauty and personal care market in India is worth $25 Bn. The D2C sector in beauty is booming currently and D2C brands are the biggest adopters of the beauty tech trends in India currently. There is immense scope for start-ups to disrupt the industry through data science and AI tech.

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AI in Home Healthcare Startups Simplifying Diagnosis

Shalmoli Sarkar — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 03:35:11 +0000

India’s health infrastructure began crumbling under the daily increasing cases of coronavirus. However, the daily increasing cases against a recovery rate of 97.52 percent, which is the highest in the world highlights a different picture. The problem is not the virus contraction, but the inadequate healthcare infrastructure such as beds, oxygen, ventilator, the poor ratio of doctors and nurses per patient.

Most towns and cities are burdened and under-resourced to do swab tests for a daily surge in cases, resulting in long waiting queues for sample collection and test results. This eventually delayed the covid treatment until it reached the peak of infection, and meanwhile, their infection might have spread to others if asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic.

In many cases, the patient with mild symptoms of the virus panicked and admitted themselves to hospitals that could have been conveniently cured at home itself with proper medication. The third wave of the pandemic created absolute chaos where the person in the critical state could not avail a bed in the hospital.

Remote healthcare in India, which remained nascent, soon gained ground in the pandemic, as doctors and patients found it convenient to keep clinic visits to a minimum. Technologies such as AI were infused in home healthtech startups that improved the speed and accuracy of diagnostics. Imaging technologies have reduced the time of diagnosis from days to seconds as cutting-edge technologies interpret, imagine, and produce instant results.

According to a joint report from EY-IPA, India’s domestic telemedicine market is estimated to reach $5.5 billion in 2020-2025 and will be growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31 percent.

How AI in home healthtech startups is speeding up diagnosis?

Home healthtech startups provide cost-effective medical assistance at home that comprises services such as at-home nursing, health screening, monitoring, telemedicine, and telehealth.

Home healthtech startups effectively leverage AI for detecting symptoms. The AI checker uses natural language processing (NLP) that analyses a patient’s free-text symptom description. After gathering information on a patient’s illness history, the machine learning algorithms assess the symptom inputs to produce care recommendations concerning the severity of a disease. For instance, an AI symptom checker can recommend self-care for mild symptoms of a disease and will advise emergency care if history shows recently being attacked with strokes, increase in high blood pressure, or heart attack.

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As per a McKinsey report, Indians can save around $10 million by 2025 by using telemedicine instead of visiting doctors physically.

The reception of AI-based symptom checkers in home healthcare startups

In 2020, several Indians turned to online platforms to consult with doctors and get diagnostic tests done. The reception of home healthtech looks promising as according to a recent health tech report by IAMAI-Praxis, there was a 300 percent increase in teleconsultations.

Moreover, another evidence of embracing healthtech solutions widely can be understood from Eka Care raising seed funding of $4.5 million by the angel and early-stage investors. The app offers AI-based symptom-checkers to enable patients to document symptoms and understand medical conditions. Symptom checkers help in the early detection of diseases, eliminates the need for unnecessary repeat tests, and saves treatment costs for patients.

Similarly, Healthtech startup Mfine uses an AI-based self-check feature for specific diseases, that helps an individual to make more informed decisions. The same platform also prepares a consolidated summary of investigation details, pointers on the diagnosis, and possible treatment suggestions to the doctors.

What lies ahead for the home healthcare startups in India?

As per a McKinsey report, Indians can save around $10 million by 2025 by using telemedicine instead of visiting doctors physically. Using AI, these healthcare platforms can analyse patient data in real-time to improve the precision of treatment. Another business opportunity lies in sharing symptoms data with various pharma and drug companies. The vast data collected by home healthtech startups can prove to be an asset for them, since they require such information to build progression models for the discovery of drugs and vaccines, at the same time both parties should ensure privacy and cybersecurity of data.

The potential also lies in rural healthcare, which is devoid of basic healthcare facilities. In the future, home healthcare startups, in collaboration with the government, can provide health care services in remote and inaccessible areas through telemedicine.

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Toothsi, Introducing Teeth Aligners The D2C Route

Shalmoli Sarkar — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 10:30:09 +0000

A smile is contagious. If one person standing at one corner smiles at another, it is rare that the other person will not smile back. A smile can uplift the moods of others and does make one look good in pictures.

To perfect the smile, youngsters make several rounds to dental clinics to bind their teeth with metal wires and brackets only to get pain and internal mouth cuts afterwards. In some cases, teenagers and young teens deny tying braces due to it being largely visible.

Moreover, metal dental braces cause poor dental hygiene and tooth staining as brush bristles and floss are barely able to reach all corners. The broken wire and dental braces can cause internal bleeding resulting in possible dental infections.

Taking inspiration from the San Jose-headquartered AlignTechnology, the makers of Invisalign braces, and realising this to be a potential in the Indian market Dr. Arpi Mehta, co-founder, and CEO of Toothsi, founded Toothsi- a D2C smile makeover dental chain in 2018.

How did Toothsi happen to Dr. Arpi Mehta?

Dr. Arpi Mehta pursued a certification in lingual (invisible) orthodontics. Upon understanding that teeth alignment through metal braces is a painful process that also causes other dental problems, she partnered with three orthodontists, Pravin Shetty, Manjul Jain, and Anirudh Kale to launch smile makeover service Toothsi in Mumbai in November 2018. The startup’s target audience belongs to the age bracket of 18-35 years of individuals. The startup began with a bootstrapping amount of Rs 5 crore from friends and co-founders.

Dr. Arpi Mehta’s Toothsi is disrupting the dental braces market by providing invisible teeth aligners that are customised flexible plastic trays pre-programmed through software to move a set of teeth in a certain manner. Noticing Indian youngsters are highly conscious about looks and take efforts to look picture-perfect,Toothsi’s customised invisible teeth aligner stands perfect in the product-market fit.

Its invisible teeth aligners also guarantee smile correction within 6-8 months compared to 1-2 years from metal braces. Today, Toothsi is present in Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Pune and till date have delivered 11,000 smile makeover plans, and has ambitious plans to generate Rs 100 crore annual recurring revenue (ARR) in a few months.

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Toothsi is disrupting the dental braces market by providing invisible teeth aligners that are customised flexible plastic trays pre-programmed through software to move a set of teeth in a certain manner.

The D2C Business Model of Toothsi

Toothsi provided end-to-end dental solutions for its entire array of products. The manufacturing operations take place in its Mumbai-based laboratory.

It follows a D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) model to provide customised teeth aligners. It provides in-house services right from dental counselling to scanning to treatment procedures and planning and manufacturing.

Toothsi’s unique products and services

The products are manufactured according to German manufacturing standards to be transparent, tasteless, lightweight, flexible. Each teeth aligner is customised to meet specific dental requirements. The Toothsi aligners do not restrict tongue or jaw mobility and give zero pain.

They also provide free-of-cost, at-home scanning services by experts. The scans are further evaluated to create a personalised ‘smile plan’ for each customer with detailed digital visualisation to understand the before and after picture of the transformation. The smile plans once approved by the customer goes for payment, and Toothsi home delivers the aligners.

Recent Funding – Toothsi

Recently Toothsi has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round led by Eight Road Ventures, Think Investments, and the Mankekar Family Office. It had earlier raised $5 million as Series A funding in January 2021.

Future for Dental care or cosmetology startups adopting the D2C model

According to Avendus Capital, the D2C business in India is projected to become a $100 billion market in India. Businesses across verticals such as retail, e-commerce, FMCG are adopting this model for acquiring more customers. Adopting the D2C model can benefit dental care or cosmetology startups by delivering products or services directly to consumers instead of channelising through intermediaries, which is cost-saving and gives convenience.

Following the D2C route, will help the startups to generate more sales, as they can sell their products and services at lower costs than their competitor by gaining autonomy over the marketing and manufacturing of products from beginning to end.

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Decoding Femtech Startups Nascency In India

Shalmoli Sarkar — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 08:35:07 +0000

In India, where women being vocal about menstruation is associated with a stigma, we can imagine the state of women being open about other female-related health issues. The situation is even distressing in rural India or in orthodox patriarchal families, where women’s health issues are to be kept secret and must not be disclosed to men or doctors. At times, most women are unaware of certain irregularities happening in their bodies and tend to neglect it till the disease reaches its malignant stage.

Besides, the stigma of most gynecologists being men makes females hesitant to openly talk about their problems or feel shy when it comes to examining the body.

The onset of the pandemic has highlighted the need for a robust healthcare system. The Indian startup ecosystem witnessed several entrepreneurs plunging into the healthtech space bringing innovations in the diagnostics and doctor consultations space. Online pharma startups have leaped ahead by providing online medicines and doctor consultations from a single platform.

With many startups emerging in the general healthcare space, sadly femtech startups are nascent in India. A femtech startup develops technological software and applications to focus on providing services and products in women’s health.

The future for femtech startups is promising as a report from Research and Markets says, that the femtech market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 13% during 2020-2026.

In 2019, the global femtech market generated a revenue of $820.6 million. According to PitchBook, a financial data and research company, the femtech sector globally attracted $592 million in venture capital investment.

Why Femtech industry is nascent in India

Reluctance of Investors

Indian investors are reluctant to fund femtech startups as they perceive it to be a niche business serving a small market that cannot give high returns on investment. Also, the investor community is dominated by males, who are unwilling to talk and understand about women’s health issues and solutions.

Cybersecurity concerns

Since femtech is about technology and apps, it poses a high risk of being vulnerable to cyberattackers exposing the details of users.

Low Awareness

Low awareness in women about solutions that can ease the pain points of women is also a reason for its infancy.

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The future for femtech startups is promising as a report from Research and Markets says, that the femtech market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 13% during 2020-2026.

Factors that can drive the femtech growth in India

Still at the nascent stage, India’s Femtech industry is expected to see new growth. Here are the growth drivers:

Working women voicing more

As more millennial women join the workforce, they will be breaking the barriers by openly voicing women-related issues in menstruation, sexual health and hormonal changes. Social media influencers such as Dr. Tanaya under the Instagram name Dr. Cuterus are normalising talking about women’s health by openly discussing and busting the myths about sexual health and other women related health problems.

Innovative approaches

As life becomes more sedentary, the complications in female diseases will rise, for which these femtech startups have innovative approaches that produce a quick diagnosis, hassle-free testing processes, and medical assistance at every step.

Rise of wearables

Advancements in smart medical devices, apps and tech wearables for women will act as key growth drivers.

Convenience

In the pandemic, people have already realised the convenience of remote healthcare from the general digital healthcare platform. The emergence of femtech startups following the same approach for women will be welcomed

Sectors where Femtech Startups have the potential to grow

Cervical Cancer: According to WHO (World Health Organisation) cervical cancer is the fourth most common cause of cancer among women around the world. Femtech startups in cervical cancer can leverage smartphones and artificial intelligence to screen for irregularities in the cervix for further diagnosis.
Breast Cancer: After cervical cancer, breast cancer causes the most number of deaths in women. Lack of knowledge about its symptoms and being hesitant to talk about it results in most women ignoring the disease. Femtech startups, using AI and high-resolution screening, can detect early-stage breast cancer precisely.
Menstrual health: Menstrual problems consist of – PCOS ( Poly-Cystic Ovary Syndrome), hormonal imbalance and mood swings during menopause. Here, femtech startups can be a woman’s wellness buddy and curate programmes and personalised plans to help them deal with such complications. It can be a one-stop platform for nutritionists, fitness coaches, psychologists and dermatologists.

Pregnancy care: Entering into motherhood is a huge step for any woman. Femtech companies can cater to the needs of pregnant women by providing proper nutrition and clinical services for pregnant women.

Existing femtech startups in India

CareMother: It is a pregnancy care femtech startup which offers personalised and remote healthcare for pregnant women to connect with gynecologists. It also provides at-door medical tests with a portable medical kit.

CervAstra: Cervical cancer develops over a long time, goes unnoticed by the women of developing countries resulting in a high mortality rate. CervAstra is an AI-powered medtech company that detects cervical cancer. It analyses pap smear samples to detect abnormalities in a short turnaround time. The instruments used for detection are portable and will enable women to walk into the nearest primary health centre, get screened and receive reports.

Celes Care: A virtual health clinic for women’s health. They offer medical guidance and information to women through their female doctors specialised in infertility, pregnancy, thyroid, PCOS, weight control, skincare, etc.

Niramai: Offers non-invasive, radiation-free and low-cost breast cancer screening technology Thermalytix.

What lies ahead for the femtech startups in India?

For femtech startups, the challenge lies in low awareness of such medical solutions. Most families might be ignorant of availing doctor consultations of such diseases online. So, the first step lies in increasing awareness through social media, taking educational sessions in schools and colleges for girls at their adolescent stage.

Femtech startups into the detection of breast and cervical cancer can do B2B partnering with large public hospitals, healthcare companies, public health entities and NGOs, which have deeper distribution channels for mass screening and awareness campaigns.

Moreover, femtech startups can also foray into the LGBTQ space to offer mental health and medical assistance to individuals who have undergone a recent gender change operation. They will be experiencing new hormonal changes in the body causing discomfort and anxiety.

There lies a huge potential in serving rural women that have remained untapped for a long time. Here, femtech startups also need to develop apps in vernacular content and develop a network of assistants who can attend to their problems for pregnancy care. The potential also lies in rural public health centres for offering them femtech solutions.

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KareXpert, Bringing Healthcare Modules Together

Anju Nambiar — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 05:35:08 +0000

Healthcare demands a caring persona and a deep understanding of problem solving. Businesses in this space must fulfill the needs of both patients and workers. Health tech is the new face of the healthcare industry which has seen enough disruption to last a lifetime. Nidhi Jain is a strong health tech leader with a praiseworthy womanpreneur story.

Nidhi Jain, the woman behind KareXpert

Nidhi Jain is a womanpreneur who is leading India’s first-ever SaaS based integrated digital healthcare platform. She is also the brain behind India’s first company to offer a most exhaustive portfolio for hospitals. She has managed to differentiate her company in the industry which is now a unique competitor in the market.

Health tech, a sector with huge potential

Nidhi’s vision for her start-up was to make healthcare accessible and affordable to Indian society and to digitally empower hospitals. She saw that the Indian healthcare IT is in its infancy stage, operating as a manual process with too many inefficiencies. However, it was predicted to touch 5% of $200 B with 30%+ CAGR (compound annual growth rate) within three years. Thus, she found a huge potential to tap into health tech.

On the entrepreneurial front, Nidhi was inspired by entrepreneurs, and she connected the dots to her roots in healthcare. Since she comes from a family of healthcare professionals, she quickly identified the gap in the market for B2B and digital solutions. This motivated her to eventually launch her start-up.

What KareXpert does

KareXpert digitally connects different kinds of hospitals. It offers end-to-end digital empowerment to hospitals and healthcare providers through its comprehensive range of AI-enabled, cloud-based and mobile-ready solutions designed for coordinated patient care, optimising operational costs and increasing revenue. They have an advanced, secured and certified webscale software technology stack and their integrated solution has over 50 applications including Advanced HIMS (Hospital Information Management System), e-Claims, MIS (management information system) Reports, etc.

How Nidhi drove the Business Model of KareXpert

When Nidhi started out her entrepreneurial journey, the concept of digital healthcare was a novelty with a lot of scepticism around its efficacy. There were hardly any players in the market and Nidhi entered the industry as a disruptor. She started out with providing doctor consultation solutions in health tech. Her previous product management experience enabled her to expertly pivot the business model towards the B2B market. Through KareXpert, Nidhi worked to fix the broken experience of patients in healthcare with respect to availing digital services.

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Nidhi Jain is a womanpreneur who is leading India’s first-ever SaaS based integrated digital healthcare platform. She is also the brain behind India’s first company to offer a most exhaustive portfolio for hospitals.

What’s in it for me?

Nidhi Jain entered business at a time when technology had not fully penetrated the healthcare segment, or most other segments for that matter. The preconceived notion surrounding doctors and hospitals has always been very traditional and formal. As a part of the healthcare providers community, she was already aware of the challenges they faced due to lack of technology tools. Also, her passion for business established her as a real leader in womanpreneurship.

Nidhi knew that solving real problems like clinical and billing issues was the only way forward for her start-up. She was proven right during the Covid-19 outbreak when massive demand emerged. Before the pandemic, the start-up was approaching potential clients. But post covid, the scenario turned the other way round and they were bombarded with business requests from hospitals and clinics. Through KareXpert, Nidhi is creating real value not just for the healthcare industry but for patients as well.

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A Peek Into The Business Empires Of Businesswoman Kim Kardashian

DU Desk — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 05:35:08 +0000

When the world was sleeping and unaware of how glamorous and feminine business and entrepreneurship could be, one woman, Kim Kardashian single-handedly built a business empire for herself and her family. We are now coming to terms with solopreneurs, womenpreneurs, and mompreneurs. But Kim Kardashian had already built a multi-billion-dollar beauty and wellness empire when the rest of the world was still playing catch up.

Who is Kim Kardashian?

Kim Kardashian is a reality TV star, an ex-stylist and now a beauty Moghul. She has a glamorous brand persona, a star-studded net worth, and is one of the biggest international celebrities. Kim paved her way into the cosmetics, and fashion industry by leveraging the power of social media during its budding days.

Kim Kardashian’s Business Portfolio

Kim Kardashian has a very vast business portfolio centred around her stint as a producer to her family’s Reality TV Show. Her portfolio is spread out across exclusive media appearances, collaborations with the who’s-who of the beauty, fashion, and media world. Currently, her prominent business ventures include:

KKW Beauty

KKW (Kim Kardashian West) Beauty is a cosmetic and beauty brand famous for its body make up, body tape products, lip, and face make up products which is currently undergoing a rebranding exercise to adopt a more sustainable approach. It is estimated to be valued at $1 Bn.

Skims

Skims is a shapewear and undergarment brand famous for its inclusive bodysuits, and loungewear, estimated to be worth $1.6 Bn. Through the brand, Kim Kardashian is promoting body positivity since her products cater to men and women of all shapes and sizes.

Keeping up with the Kardashians

At the crux of Kim’s business portfolio is Keeping up with the Kardashians, a reality TV show she co-produced with her family for a long duration of 20 Seasons and which recently concluded. KUWTK has left behind a long legacy and has propelled Kim Kardashian to the pinnacle of stardom.

Endorsement Deals

Kim Kardashian endorses and collaborates with the top designers, make-up artists and brands of the fashion world including the likes of Chanel, Versace, and Mugler. She has appearances at top fashion events including the Met Gala and Paris Fashion Week.

Instagram Ads

Kim Kardashian does sponsored Instagram posts for luxury brands and products in beauty, health, wellness, makeup, jewellery, cosmetics, and apparel. She charges a tentative $1 Mn for each sponsored post.

How Kim Kardashian became a successful Businesswoman

Kim Kardashian became a successful businesswoman due to her existing television show, the publicity and media coverage received from it. Also, due to her celebrity image and personal life which read like an open book, she has been a favourite among gossip blogs, and the paparazzi. This exposure has helped her business success immensely.

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At the crux of Kim’s business portfolio is Keeping up with the Kardashians, a reality TV show she co-produced with her family for a long duration of 20 Seasons and which recently concluded.

What’s in it for me?

Kim Kardashian’s business success is a lesson in branding for solopreneurs and mompreneurs. You need to build a solid brand image for yourself to move forward successfully in business. Learning from Kim Kardashian’s life, you need to capitalise on powerful outreach channels like social media, and digital platforms like YouTube to build your brand image.

Kim Kardashian has been an active user of Twitter since it was first launched. She has actively engaged with her followers and fans without failing to update them about her next move, her pursuits, and passion. Social media and digital platforms are strong branding tools which solopreneurs need to leverage since the exposure and outreach opportunities are at a global scale. Finally, Kim Kardashian’s success is also a lesson in women empowerment. Despite many naysayers and negative publicity received over the years, many of which were intensely sexist in nature, Kim kept pursuing her business ambitious and proved to the world that women can raise empires from the ground in business.

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Indian D2C Beauty Brand MyGlamm to Scale across the South Asian Market

Aakash Sharma — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 08:35:07 +0000

MyGlamm, a direct-to-consumer beauty brand in India that sells most of its products through its website, app and retail touchpoints, has recently raised $71.3 million in funding. Following this fundraising round, the company is aiming to scale its business across the South Asian market.

The start-up had raised $23.5 million in its four-time subscribed Series C financing round from Amazon, Ascent Capital and Wipro in March 2021. It has recently added $47.8 million as part of the round.

Darpan Sanghvi founded MyGlamm in 2017 and today also has on its board POPxo founder Priyanka Gill as a co-founder after the acquisition of ‘India’s largest digital community of Women’ in 2020. The company wants to go beyond traditional online distribution and put forth MyGlammxo as a channel to get its products.

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With WebEngage, MyGlamm currently has a 45% retention rate and is targeting Rs. 500 Crore Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) by next year.

What propelled the creation of MyGlamm?

Started in 2017, the fashion-focused company found its roots in the goal of providing ‘glam quotient’ to its customers regardless of their busy days, without a compromise. MyGlamm is backed by one of Europe’s largest natural beauty companies, and it collaborates with international makeup artists and experts to create exciting innovations to achieve its goal of serving fashion clients with ease.

The start-up today operates as a house of brands in the beauty and personal care spaces. It works in the cosmetics, skin, hair, bath, body and personal care sectors. MyGlamm has been able to build this because the start-up is truly based on a direct to consumers (D2C) model. This allows it to communicate directly with customers. Most other firms operating in this sector are too reliant on third-party marketplaces for their sales.

How does MyGlamm plan to scale to the South Asian market?

The start-up plans to deploy the fresh funds to expand its product development, data science, and technology research teams. It is also working on expanding its offline presence and broadening the digital reach of POPxo.

By doubling down on its D2C cosmetic and personal care setup, MyGlamm plans to leverage its digital presence and community-driven growth model for global scalability. It is looking to bypass the traditional online distribution channels and offer the best products from its multiple touchpoints to consumers across the spectrum.

MyGlamm D2C – what can others learn from this upward multi-channel growth?

By its unique website portal, easy-to-use application, and an already growing offline presence via the 15000 over-the-counter sales points, MyGlamm has come a long way in acing the D2C race in the fashion industry. The start-up’s physical presence accounts for 40% of the revenue it generates today. The fact that the beauty and personal care sector remained one of the few sectors that did not face a slump during the pandemic also served the start-up’s growth.

The beauty and personal care market in India is increasing due to the boom of D2C. The industry is expected to grow with a compound annual growth rate of 4.23% between 2020 and 2025, with an estimated value of $8 billion. The rapid growth of the D2C beauty industry is in line with the growing penetration of internet services in India, the popularity of e-commerce and social trading platforms, and interactions on social media. This gives a sufficiently large base for new businesses to explore their growth avenues.

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