FemTech has been a growing area of interest for investors, both domestically and abroad, in the past two years. The buzzy sector, which caters to women's health needs, has exploded just like the broader health tech space amid the pandemic.
According to Rock Health's tracking, investment in digital health startups catering to women and those who identify as women in 2021, at $1.3 billion by August, compared to the $774 million raised in all of 2020. That spike, however, only accounts for 7% of the overall health-tech funding for 2021, compared to accounting for 11% in 2019.
Beyond Capital Ventures is a major backer of Kasha Global, which sells women's and reproductive health-care products in East Africa. In addition, it hires local staff to distribute health-care info and assist with technology and ordering. The company — headed by Joanna Bichsel, who previously served as principal technology adviser for global development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — currently operates in Rwanda and Kenya and has delivered more than 8 million products to-date.
Kasha is making inroads in a market that has typically been served by non-profit organizations and largely seen as unprofitable, in part because of social stigma. In Rwanda, for example, up to 18% of girls and women missed out on school and work because they lacked access to menstrual pads last year.
"One of the reasons Kasha started was just recognition that women are so influential in the space as customers, as consumers. They, of course, have so many health needs. They menstruate every month for over 40 years — just one woman — and you can multiply that by billions," Bichsel said.
The impact of that loss of work time or school time, paired with the high cost of products, is a persistent cause of poor health outcomes for women in the region.
One key factor in Kasha's success is this increasingly cited statistic when it comes to health care: Women make a majority of those decisions in a household, even if they don't hold the purse strings.
That makes women a hugely influential, yet still underserved, consumer, Bichsel said.
Just look to the multitude of multinational corporations across industries like beauty, pharmaceuticals and others, which invest billions but struggle to penetrate 90% of the population in some of these regions, she said.
"So with Kasha, the whole concept there is this is a very influential consumer base. And if we can build a direct-to-consumer platform that reaches that — that basically can get goods and information and has a direct contact and get insights on the market — that's a very strong business you can monetize," Bichsel added.
It's why the company hired local employees distribute information and help with online purchases, especially in rural areas.
"I do think when you're focusing on more mass market and lower income individuals, you do have to be a bit more creative in your business models," Bichsel said.
Some may balk at the idea that something like women's health products in rural East Africa could be a profitable business, but Eva Yazhari, general partner at Beyond Capital, doesn't see it that way.
Yazhari has a background on Wall Street but her family previously lived in Africa, so she "didn't have the biases that a lot of investors have around emerging markets and investing in places like Africa and India where we invest."
Beyond has provided Series B bridge funding for Kasha and is looking for more purpose-driven opportunities. Kasha's other investors also include MasterCard and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.
A key to understanding the market opportunity lies in understanding that end-to-end tech does not work well there, Yazhari said.
"In reality, to kind of provide business solutions to a lot of the needs, you need tech-assisted models," she said, noting that Kasha is quickly becoming Africa's leading FemTech platform.
Bichsel said that in large part, global health operates largely without data — as evidenced by the pandemic.
"There's literally a few people in the world that make the decision on how many units of this product gets into that country...it's basically a guess on what a country needs, what women need, in a certain area. It's super broken," she said.
"This is the time to be investing in Africa, and in emerging markets, in access to basic goods and services. And that's because there are a lot of industries that simply have not been disrupted," Yazhari said.
Follow Anjalee on Twitter @AnjKhem
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