💸 Dr Mridula Pore's Peppy Raises Series B and Expands to the US
FemWealth Issue #94
Happy Sunday, FemWealth Friends!
In the Spotlight 💸
Co-founded and co-led by Dr. Mridula Pore, London-based Peppy is a personalized digital health platform that pioneered free-for-employee health support in Europe. It offers health services around menopause, fertility, pregnancy, men’s health, and early parenthood as employee benefits, entirely free to the user via their employer.
When it launched menopause support as an employee benefit in 2018, it was a world first. Since then, Peppy also supports endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), conditions that each affect roughly one in 10 women in the US.
The platform offers access to experts via a mobile app with instant messaging, group chat, video consultations, live events, articles, videos, and programs. Users can also join online communities.
To fuel its US expansion, Peppy secured a $45m Series B led by AlbionVC and joined by Kathaka, MTech Capital, Simplyhealth, and Sony Innovation Fund. Existing investors, including Felix Capital, Hambro Perks, Outward VC, and Seedcamp, have also participated in the round.
“We’re on a mission to become a household name across the world and our Series B funding is just the start. We already dominate Europe’s employer-funded gender-based healthcare market.” - Dr Mridula Pore, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Peppy,
Peppy’s client base includes 250 world-leading enterprise clients such as Accenture, Adobe, Capgemini, Microsoft, P&G, and PwC.
Read more: Peppy secures a $45M Series B to expand its B2B2C health services platform to the US
Also, read the FemWealth Founder’s Story featuring Dr. Pore, where she shares more about her entrepreneurial journey, Peppy’s mission, and raising a Series B under the current market conditions 👉
FemWealth Favourites ❤️
💸 How Creative Fabrica raised $61m from ‘live, laugh, love’ posters and generative AI - Co-founded by Anca Stefan (CTO), the Amsterdam-based Creative Fabrica, is a marketplace for digital files like print-on-demand posters, fonts, and graphics.
💸 Modern Maternity Care Center Oula Has Raised $19.1 Million Series A Round to Continue Raising the Standard for Pregnancy and Childbirth - Oula, a modern maternity clinic co-founded by Adrianne Nickerson (CEO) and Elaine Purcell (COO), raised a $19.1 million Series A funding led by 8VC with participation from existing investors including Metrodora, Female Founders Fund, Collaborative Fund, and Alumni Ventures.
💸 InsurTech Joyn Insurance bags $17.7m - Founded and led by Seraiana Macia, the US-based insure tech company raised $17.7m in Series A funding led by OMERS Ventures, with participation from Avanta Ventures, ManchesterStory, Cohen Circle, SiriusPoint and private individual investors.
💸 Aiming to take on competition from China and the US, Iris.ai receives up-to €14.4 million in funding - Co-founded and led by Anita Schjøll Abildgaard, the Oslo-based AI engine for scientific text understanding, Iris.ai received a €2.4 million grant and up to €12 million in equity investments from the 2022 EIC Fund.
💸 Jetstream, a Ghanaian e-logistics platform for Africa’s B2B importers and exporters, takes in $13M equity, debt - The Ghanaian e-logistics startup, co-founded and led by Miishe Addy secured $13 million in equity and debt pre-Series A financing.
💸 Our obsession with pets means startups aimed at Vets are booming, as Digitail shows - Digitail, a startup that automates the admin for veterinarians, raised an $11 million Series A funding round led by Atomico. Ruxandra Pui is a co-founder and CPO.
💸 Vaxess Raises Additional $10M in Funding - The Cambridge, Ma.-based company, co-founded by Kathryn Kosuda, PhD (Chief Scientific Officer), is developing sustained release patch technology for vaccines and therapeutics. It has raised $10 million in extended Series B funding led by RA Capital, The Engine, and Mission BioCapital.
💸 Nest Genomics Raises $8.5M to Increase Access to Patients’ Genetic Information - Co-founded and led by Moran Snir, the healthtech company provides the software infrastructure needed for health systems, clinics, drugmakers, and payers to launch and scale genomic programs while also enabling patients to easily access their genetic information.
“With the dramatic drop in sequencing cost and our increased understanding of the genome, genetics is becoming applicable to more and more patients. But there is a last-mile problem with delivering genetic information to patients and integrating it into providers’ workflows.” - Moran Snir, Nest’s Co-founder and CEO
💸 Seek lands $7.5M investment for AI that answers domain-specific questions - Led by founder and CEO Sarah Nagy, the automation platform for data analytics tasks raised $7.5 million across pre-seed and seed rounds from Conviction Partners, Battery Ventures, and former Snowflake CEO Bob Muglia.
💸 Singapore-based Supermom helps parenting brands navigate a post-cookie world - Founded by Joan Ong, Lynn Yeoh (CEO), and Rebecca Koh, the Singapore-based parenting platform with 20 million users in six Southeast Asian countries offers parents price comparisons, communities, and the chance to earn money by completing surveys. It has raised an oversubscribed Series A of $8 million SGD (approx. $6 million USD) led by Qualgro, with participation from AC Ventures.
💸 Digital fashion brand House of Blueberry raises six million dollars - The digital-first fashion brand, founded and led by Gizem ‘Mishi’ McDuff, is on a mission to back female design and aesthetic. With the new funding, it aims to secure its place as “the leading fashion house in the metaverse.”
💸 Astro Rebrands to Howdy, Raises Additional $5M - The company founded and led by Jacqueline Samira, helps tech businesses recruit talent in Latin America. The fresh funding is an extension of the $13 million Series A it announced in August 2022.
💸 L’Oréal Is Among New Investors in Metaverse Developer Digital Village - Evelyn Mora is the founder and chief executive officer of Digital Village, a French startup enabling “the next evolution of retail.” The company secured a $4 million funding round from investors, including L’Oréal’s venture capital fund BOLD and the British Fashion Council.
💸 Blaze makes coding more accessible with AI-driven, no code app builder - The company co-founded and co-led by Tina Denuit-Wojcik and Nanxi Liu launched publicly and announced a $3.5 million pre-seed round.
💸 Dutch health-tech startup Lapsi Health raises USD 3.7M in oversubscribed Seed Round to continue their development and enter the US market - Co-founded by Diana van Stijn (Chief Medical Officer), Lapsi Health is developing sound-based medical technology and software tools to empower clinicians at the point of care and to enhance remote consultations. The new funding will be deployed towards technology development, acquiring FDA certification, and beginning commercialization activities in the USA.
💸 Baton Raises $2.8M to Launch Marketplace for Small Business Acquisitions - The New York-based startup, co-founded by Jamie Roth, is developing a marketplace to enable small business buyers and sellers to connect and begin negotiations around a valuation calculated by an objective third party.
VC: 💸 Monique Woodard Unveils Cake Ventures, New $17 Million Fund Focused On ‘Demographic Change’ - Cake Ventures, a US-based pre-seed and seed-stage firm led by Monique Woodard, raised $17m for its debut fund. The fund will focus on new businesses driving demographic change, specifically in three areas: (1) the aging and longevity-minded population; (2) the increased earning power of women in society; and (3) the shift to “majority-minority” (i.e., a “new majority” of early tech adopters coming from Asian, Black, and Latino backgrounds).
Cake’s portfolio already includes 12 companies, such as Rares, Most Days, Bright, Gerald, and Joshin. Around 40% of the firm’s investments to date are led by women founders and 40% by founders who identify as Black.
LPs include Bank of America and billionaire Melinda French Gates.
Read Monique Woodard’s thread on her experience of raising a VC fund 👉
🙌 Marking Cowboy Ventures’ 10 Year Anniversary - By Aileen Lee, Founding Partner at Cowboy Ventures
👏 The Geek and the Suit of Amadeus Capital recall 25 years of fun and finance (The Times $) - Features veteran VC investor Anne Glover, CEO of London-based Amadeus Capital, a firm she co-founded in 1997.
👀 Lessons from Backing Over 100 Female-Led Start-Ups. Where FF Are Building Today - By Nisha Dua and Claire Biernacki of BBG Ventures
🗣️ How to prepare the perfect pitch deck - Emma Phillips, VC at LocalGlobe, and Julia André, a partner at Index Ventures, share their best tips on how to create a pitch deck.
M&A: 🤝 BioNTech acquires Tunisian-born and U.K-based AI startup InstaDeep for £562M - German-based biotech company BioNTech, co-founded by Özlem Türeci (Chief Medical Officer), is set to acquire UK-based AI startup InstaDeep, co-founded by Zohra Slim, for up to £562 million (~$680 million).
Beauty industry: 💄 You Can Try Makeup Online Before You Buy It, Thanks To This Woman Entrepreneur - Features “the godmother of virtual makeup” Alice Chang, founder and CEO of Perfect Corp., a virtual try-on technology used by over 400 other beauty brands. | Also, check out Forbes’ 50 Over 50: Asia 2023
Career Opportunity 👇
Thank you for reading FemWealth! Enjoy your Sunday, and have a great week ahead!
Anamaria
Founder & Writer of FemWealth