Alexis Kestler
The femtech industry has immense potential. If you want to build a femtech startup to solve women‘s health issues and empower them to lead better lives, you can create a profitable business while contributing to women‘s advancement. People worldwide are now discussing women‘s issues and finding solutions, irrespective of gender.
According to Statista, the global femtech market was $22 billion in 2020 and could reach $60 billion by 2027. This shows we‘re making progress by creating products and services tailored to women‘s needs. However, stigma persists around sensitive femtech topics like menstruation, pregnancy, and sexual wellness.
In this guide, I‘ll discuss femtech fundamentals and detail how to create a femtech app addressing women‘s issues to enhance their lives.
What is Femtech?
Femtech refers to tech-enabled solutions focusing on women‘s health. These include software, products, services, diagnostic tools, wearables, and more that use technology to address women‘s health concerns. These range from menstruation, sexual health, reproductive health, maternal health, menopause, fitness, nutrition, and more. Femtech also covers general health conditions disproportionately affecting women like heart disease, osteoporosis, and autoimmune disorders.
Example femtech solutions:
- Clue – Menstrual cycle tracking app
- Ava – Wearable bracelet predicting fertile days
- Freda – Feminine hygiene subscription service
- Daye – Startup creating alternatives to period painkillers
- Lattice Medical – Bioengineering for breast implants and reconstruction
- Kindbody – Fertility services like IVF, egg freezing, and donor support
- Coroflow – Breastfeeding monitor measuring milk consumption
The term “femtech” was coined in 2016 by Ida Tin, co-founder of menstrual tracking app Clue. It aims to increase awareness of historical exclusion of women‘s health issues and showcase research gaps to empower women and improve health and hygiene.
If you want to build something to meet women‘s specific needs in this rapidly growing space, many opportunities exist. Identify unaddressed problems women face, determine solutions, and select the optimal way to implement them via an app, product, service, diagnostic tool, etc.
Why Are Femtech Apps Popular?
We‘re in an era of smartphones and mobile apps solving problems and providing entertainment. Femtech startups now create useful apps helping women solve health issues anywhere, anytime – a sea change from when just discussing these problems was difficult.
Femtech gives women new options to openly address issues and find actual solutions to better care for themselves and families. Products and services delivered through apps are gaining momentum for several reasons:
- Rising feminism and global focus on women‘s issues
- Investors supporting femtech businesses
- Innovators creating women-centered tech products/services
- Increased demand for women‘s health, body, and fertility info
Building a femtech startup with apps benefiting women can generate strong revenue while contributing to women‘s empowerment.
Types of Femtech Apps
If you want to create femtech apps focused on women‘s health, consider these categories:
Pregnancy Care Apps
Pregnancy apps help new and expecting moms track physical health before and after delivery and access info to properly care for themselves and babies.
Examples: Babycenter, GiftedMom
Period and Fertility Trackers
Period tracking apps help women monitor menstruation instead of tracking manually, detecting irregularities that often indicate health issues. Fertility trackers help plan pregnancy with cycle data. Some connect to hardware tracking women‘s pelvic/sexual health.
Examples: Clue, Grace Health
Nutrition and Fitness Apps
These apps help women maintain fitness and follow nutrition programs tailored to their needs and fitness goals.
Example: Gazella
Lifestyle Apps
Lifestyle apps aim to optimize women‘s mental and physical wellbeing through fitness, sleep, meditation, stress management, and improving overall quality of life.
Example: Asana Rebel
General Health Apps
These include medicine trackers, telemedicine connecting women to healthcare providers, and more focused on general health conditions affecting women like heart disease.
Example: Maven
Mental Health Apps
Mental health femtech apps can connect women to specialists, track moods, offer personalized coping strategies and advice, and more to support mental wellness.
How to Build a Femtech App
Follow these steps to build your femtech app:
Develop an Idea
Your idea should solve a woman‘s problem or need through an app, product, or service. Research the competitive landscape to determine your unique value proposition if similar solutions exist already. Get any required healthcare organization approvals and partnerships. Ensure your idea is practical and achievable.
Understand Your Target Market
Analyze your target audience‘s needs, preferences, income, location, and pain points. Research the femtech market leaders and strategies. Study direct competitors and opportunities. Learn from others‘ mistakes and refine your strategy. Promote your app extensively since femtech is still relatively new.
Secure Investment
Developing femtech apps requires considerable investments for development, testing, deployment, maintenance, etc. You‘ll need developers, operations professionals, tools, and infrastructure. Seek investors excited about your idea who can fund these expenses. Many investors now support femtech startups like Portfolia and Catalyst Health Ventures. Create a prototype and business plan to showcase your vision and potential returns.
Obtain Legal Approvals
Since femtech is healthcare-related, ensure you understand and comply with relevant regulations in your country/region. If your app handles user data, confirm it follows privacy rules like HIPAA and GDPR.
Build Your App
Find a Team: Hire skilled developers, testers, and operations professionals either in-house or outsourced to affordable countries. Vet options on LinkedIn, peer referrals, job posts, reviews, etc.
Create an MVP: Build a minimum viable product with your team to validate demand before fully developing everything. Prioritize the most valuable features for users.
Documentation: Have your business analyst detail all technical specifications to guide your team.
Development: Your team handles planning, coding, testing, deployment, and maintenance. Fix bugs rapidly to ensure security, performance, functionality, scalability, etc.
Analyze and Improve
Monitor app metrics like traffic sources, user behavior, popular pages, etc. Identify areas needing improvement and potential new features. Keep refining and optimize further. Handle ongoing maintenance and quickly patch any issues to keep the app secure and performing well.
Femtech Startup Challenges
Despite growing global interest, building a femtech startup still poses challenges:
Funding Struggles
Many investors are men who may not fully grasp women‘s health issues. Convincing them your solution will truly benefit women and generate returns can be difficult.
Fewer Funds for Women
Women often acquire less startup funding, though reasons are complex. If you believe in your vision, persistently yet tactfully make your case to investors until you find the right fit.
Notable Femtech Apps
Here are some remarkable femtech apps to inspire you:
Clue: This popular period/cycle tracker app by femtech pioneer Ida Tin has over 12 million active users. It raised over $42 million since launching in 2016.
Natural Cycles: The first FDA-cleared birth control app tracks body temperature to predict fertility. It was created by physicist Elina Berglund and has over 1.5 million users.
Flo: Flo helps women track their period and menstrual cycle. It offers personalized health insights and courses on reproductive health.
Conclusion
This guide covered how to create a femtech startup focused on apps empowering women‘s health and lives. With the global femtech market surging, your idea could both generate profits and make a difference for women worldwide.
