Women’s health app Flo Health has raised over $200 million in series C investment from General Atlantic, leading to a total valuation of more than $1 billion and as such marking the start-up’s achievement of unicorn status.
The app is described as a tool for preventative care and health education, enabling users to track menstrual cycles, monitor more than 70 symptoms and access tailored health insights, with the aim of supporting women to have better-informed conversations about their health and helping them to recognise potential issues early.
The funding is set to support Flo’s next phase of growth, with focus on expansion into new areas including perimenopause and menopause, enhancing insights through the app, increasing research and development headcount and “pursuing strategic expansion opportunities”.
Dmitry Gurski, co-founder and CEO, states that a particular goal for the future is to reach one billion women through Flo’s global pro-social programme, an initiative providing free access to Flo Premium across 66 countries such as India, Indonesia and Nigeria. “This investment from General Atlantic will help propel Flo Health’s growth as we continue normalising conversations about women’s health, improving health literacy, and raising awareness of women’s health issues worldwide, especially in underserved regions.”
On LinkedIn, the news has inspired debate around representation in the industry.
Funding: the wider trend
In July, we highlighted Healthtech-1’s announcement that £2.7 million has been raised in seed funding with plans to expand their automation solutions for primary care, aiming to reduce the admin burden and to help “fix” primary care with tech.
Earlier in the year we reported that care management software provider Log my Care announced an additional £3 million in funding, bringing the total raised to over £7 million and contributing to plans to “further establish Log my Care as a leading supplier to the learning disability sector”.
We also covered the news that Medtech start-up MyOpNotes, a digital platform designed to streamline the writing of operation notes for surgeons whilst capturing data for research and audit purposes, was awarded Innovate UK grant funding to support the integration of its technology into the NHS.
Digital and women’s health
In other news, Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Healthcare has launched competitions seeking innovations in a number of areas including women’s health, with the aim of accelerating the uptake of innovations and facilitating the collection of evidence in real-world settings.
And we noted the launch of an international accelerator programme for start-ups focusing on the femtech sector, launched by Italy-headquartered Zambon through their research venture Zcube, with five start-ups to receive an investment of €100,000.
