German startup Yu desires to help women have more healthy hair, skin, sex and health with doctor on demand services. Just some months vintage, some 5,000 customers have already ordered the Berlin startup’s first product — pots of diet chews that claim to improve hair health and begin at €29.
The subsequent stage comes later this year; Yu CEO Nicholas Fechtner plans to promote the company’s first pharmaceutical products and provide girl clients online medical doctor consultations and calls.
“The first product happens to have that splendor touch, however it’s virtually approximately supplying answers for commonplace problems,” Fechtner tells Sifted, pronouncing that Yu will consciousness on making taboo merchandise which includes thrush cream and contraceptives “shame unfastened”.
Yu is considered one of developing number of startups in Europe seeking to expand a gendered niche inside the subject of healthtech.
But with preferred physician on demand apps like Kry already expanding at pace — and competitors like Babylon Health (UK), Push Doctor (UK), Min Doktor (Sweden) and ViviDoctor (Belgium) across Europe — do women actually need their personal physician apps? And will those services take off?
What’s the point?
Johannes Schildt, the founder of Swedish startup Kry, informed Sifted he doesn’t see why women would possibly need a separate platform particularly for his or her desires (Kry already advises on ladies’s fitness issues inclusive of premenstrual syndrome, premenstrual dysmorphic disorder, menstrual pains, menopausal problems, postponement of menstruation, and contraceptives as well as postpartum depression).
“We think sufferers advantage most whilst there’s a unmarried go-to app for verifiable scientific advice and primary care,” Schildt tells Sifted. “We don’t see any purpose why clinical experts in women’s health ought to be unable to deal with female sufferers through KRY or systems like ours.”
However many other pioneers inside the area disagree. Longstanding London startup Zava, for instance, raised $32m this 12 months, and caters to ladies’s fitness, in addition to ‘area of interest’ sectors like ‘guys’s fitness’, ‘sexual fitness’ and ‘well being’.
Dr Louisa Draper, clinical director at Zava, instructed Sifted there was “certainly” area for girl-targeted services.
“We have seen first-hand the demand,” she says. “There is proof that many girls’s healthcare issues have now and again been omitted or beneath-funded by healthcare structures. Online services are in a really perfect position to listen to ladies and layout a bespoke provider that allows women to get right of entry to the offerings they need, in a manner that works for them.”
