Back in March NCM attended the Women’s Health Innovation Forum at the Natural History Museum in Edinburgh, alongside our clients Pink Salt Ventures and hosts Goddess Gaia Ventures.
Gender disparity endures as a major issue within health care systems. This disparity highlights the issue of a lack of funding and research into female focused technology to elevate female centred health concerns and the importance of building specialised funds that tackle investing into this sector from the outset.
The conference championed the rising Femtech industry which is actively tackling such inequalities head on by primarily channeling investment into female centred health care solutions. Goddess Gaia Ventures’ general partner and host Priya Oberoi shed light on how her personal experiences with health highlighted the active, systematic discrimination of our health care systems against woman, with its focus being predominately male-centric. Currently, the Femtech industry represents only $1.2 trillion of the $12 trillion health care market, despite women accounting for around 50% of the global population, highlighting the “complete lack of funding” that is leading to woman being chronically mistreated and misdiagnosed.
Priya highlighted the shocking revelation that the UK has the largest female health gap in the G20 and the 12th largest female health gap globally. Priya declared that consequently Goddess Gaia’s mission statement is to disrupt the status quo and provide Europe’s first female-centred health care fund.
The synergetic environment of the conference brought together and enabled investors, entrepreneurs, researchers, analysts and other industry experts who shared a collective ambition to contribute towards the growing Femtech industry. They discussed the arising opportunities and innovations that focus on how tech, products, solutions, services and devices can support and improve women’s health and wellness.
Whilst the context of the conference focused on the wider issue of women’s health, the event also acted to facilitate individuals seeking to develop or support innovative ideas to learn from industry experts how to overcome common setbacks to longevity in order to achieve success.
Guest speakers were invited to share their knowledge and experience of ideas related to the topics of, for example, what good early-stage companies look like; the challenges and fundraising and market opportunities facing female and underrepresented founders; and insights into the female perspective of how to build and grow successful healthcare companies.
NCM Associate Director, Sukhjit Dhaliwal, alongside Anna Brown, Partner at Addleshaw & Goddard, and Charlotte Walker, Manager at Alvaraz & Marsal, highlighted the importance of creating strong relationships with advisers in the early stages of the fund life cycle. These contributors also discussed the challenges that entity founders can face during fund creation and the benefits of utilising lawyers, tax advisors, accountants and administrators to overcome these challenges and ensure the smooth functioning and success of a fund.
The key take-away from the conference is that the industry is gaining traction. However, Femtech is still a vastly underserved market that is ripe for investment but still lacking representation and investor uptake, with only six Femtech funds existing globally. With funds like Goddess Gaia Ventures and Pink Salt Ventures leading the way, supporting this rising industry is an exciting process and the resulting investment opportunities will facilitate women’s access to fair health care globally, not just in the immediate future but hopefully forever.
If you would like to read more about the Women's Health Innovation & Femtech Forum Scotland, and hear Priya Oberoi’s speech, please visit the link to Goddess Gaia Ventures website here.