Why the growth of femtech in India can transform the way we look at women’s health

Deploying technology to enable women lead healthier lives might be nascent in the country but can go a long way in changing the parochial lens through which society views women’s reproductive health

Every woman–and I am guessing not just Indian women–has a story about awkward or harrowing experiences with visits to gynaecologists. Here’s my first: At 23, diagnosed with Stage 3 endometriosis, I awaited my turn with a well-known gynaecologist of South Mumbai. She looks at my sonography report, crinkles her nose and says, “Do you know what your monthly bleeding is? It’s your uterus weeping. Your uterus is not getting to do its job. For you, the best way forward to keep the disease at check is to get pregnant as soon as you can.” It was the only time I met that gynaecologist.

Help in the form of a chatbot

Journalist and founder of She The People (shethepeople.tv) Shaili Chopra launched the chatbot Doctor Didi last year to not only change entrenched perceptions and attitude towards women’s health but to offer solutions.The motivation behind Doctor Didi is to empower women so that the solutions presented are real, not mystified and hush-hush. The chatbot solves women’s sexual and reproductive health issues in a judgment-free and discreet way using predictive intelligence.

Chopra says, “Growing up the sum total of everything we needed to know about sex was in adult films and Mills & Boon. Our parents did their best to cloud our thinking about sex, love, sexual health and gynaecology by using the four letter word ‘shhh’. Every girl grew up thinking her sexual organs were called ‘shame-shame’ and that women's health was only about seeking glowing skin—not curing fibroids, hair fall or hormonal imbalances.” Doctor Didi is on WhatsApp and answers all questions in a simple, sequential menu-driven format by understanding symptoms the user enters. The bot answers queries in Hindi, English, Bengali and Tamil—a virtual big sister to every girl and woman looking for information on questions about their health. One can WhatsApp 98210 01777 with a ‘hi’ and get their queries answered. “Doctor Didi is part of our upcoming larger effort called Gytree, which aims to provide women with health solutions,” adds Chopra.

Since it was launched in 2021, more than 80,000 conversations have taken place on Doctor Didi. Currently there are no doctors on board to offer prescriptions but a board of doctor-advisors led by Dr Sudeshna Ray, a gynaecologist with more than 25 years of experience, verifying all the information on the bot.

Tapping into the market

India’s femtech story is still nascent but has all the indications of a potentially exponential market. Times are changing, not so much from the perspective of medical care and medical professionals or the earlier generation’s perceptions and tendency to hide and shame issues of women’s health, but more and more young women want more from their lives and are making health a priority. “She wants strength, fitness, a pain-free life and sexual pleasure. A lot of the answers to these lie in how strong a preventive health system we’re building,” Chopra says, based on her research leading to the launch of Doctor Didi.

Femtech, in simple words, is deploying technology to help women lead healthier lives. It includes period-tracking apps, fertility solutions, pregnancy care, tech-enabled solutions for hormonal disorders and other aspects of women's health—along with solutions that include wearables, internet-connected medical devices, mobile apps and hygiene products. A chatbot such as Doctor Didi is the new frontier—interactive, private and geared towards providing concrete answers.

The term ‘femtech’ came into being in 2016 when Ida Tin, a Danish entrepreneur, founded Clue, a period- and fertility-tracking app. As an industry, femtech largely encompasses any digital or standard health tools aimed at women's health. According to Global Market Insights, a United States-based market research and management consulting company, the femtech industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.2 per cent from 2021 to 2027. India is home to five per cent of the world's total FemTech companies. A McKinsey article published in February 2022 says, “Despite reporting more severe levels, frequency, and duration of pain, reports show that women are less likely to be treated for pain; their symptoms are at times expressed as ‘emotional’ or ‘psychosomatic’. The report also added that women's health is no longer a niche market. It includes much more than just maternal or reproductive care: “Indeed, women's healthcare presents enormous opportunities for value creation. It's high time for investors to start turning their sights toward women's health start-ups and for people to stop pretending that women don't exist or that their health issues are trivial.”

According to a report published in 2021, an Emcee Pharmaceutical Initiative titled Uncondition Yourself: Indian Women’s Health Report 2021, 60 per cent of Indian women opt out of the workforce due to poor health. Moreover, 50 per cent of Indian women suffer from some form of sexual, gynaecological or reproductive complexities.

By women, for women

Most femtech companies in India, formed largely over the past five years, are run by women. Swathi Kulkarni started Elda Healthcare in late 2021 with her co-founders after having worked in the women’s health space for about a decade, keeping a specific age grouping mind: Middle-age and menopausal women. Elda has a team of experts who assess, counsel and provide solutions for a spectrum of concerns common in this age group–related to menopause–like sexual health, overall wellness and comprehensive ways to reduce menopause-related problems. Once a woman or man signs up for a programme, experts understand their health issues, identify precautionary measures, gain access to meaningful diagnosis and, above all, help women prioritise their own health. Kulkarni says, “Being in the 35-plus bracket myself, I realised the gap that exists for women who are beyond their reproductive age. Globally, the average age of menopause in women is 50-plus, but in India that average is around 46. We built our research talking to around 200 women in that group and our conclusion was that a lot of them, capable of paying for such services, were suffering silently with many common issues that crop up in the menopausal years.” With discreet, customisable, online consultations and solutions, Elda’s customer base grew quickly and now the majority of their customers are from Tier-2 cities. “Obviously the need for this age group for expert help is overwhelming,” adds Kulkarni.

Navigating a social fabric

While femtech is being hailed as the next big frontier in heath technology all over the world, with the United States and Israel taking the lead, in India, women’s health technology has to deal with a social fabric that attaches customs, patriarchal beliefs and shame to menstruation, sexual health, menopause and women’s cancers. It is probably a tougher task when centuries of conditioning are handed down through mothers and sisters. If the momentum for femtech innovations, built over the last five to seven years, continues, and if femtech start-ups can trickle down to women in smaller cities and towns, and villages, a revolution could be close. The new Indian woman could probably live with chemists wrapping up a packet of sanitary napkins with paper and tape, but it’s time the patience for regressive ideas about women’s bodies and health ran out.

A round-up of some of the best femtech companies in India

CelesCare, Ovaika and ooWomaniya: These three start-ups have been accruing credibility as well as success in the past few years, addressing a spectrum of women’s healthcare concerns including online consultations with doctors, shopping from a curated collection of products related to menstrual health, pregnancy and overall fitness and wellness.

Carmesi and Sirona: Both are online shopping portals for products reLated to intimate care, menstruation, sexual health and nutrition. Carmesi has innovative products such as an overnight disposable underwear and BREASE (Bra-Stress Relief), a roll-on application for discomfort experience while wearing bras.

CervAstra and Niramai: CrevAstra is India’s first low-cost, cervical cancer identifier and Niramai, recently cleared by the US FDA for their medical device SMILE-100, is a software-based medical device for detecting breast cancer in early stages.

Caremother and MindandMom: Both these companies provide solutions for a mindful pregnancy.

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