Digital Health in CEE: A sector waiting to be discovered

Central and Eastern Europe is a vibrant region that encompasses twelve countries as defined by the OECD – Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and we’ve also included five companies from Montenegro, Belarus and Moldova – and has about 318 million inhabitants. It is home to 661,187 developers and several startup success stories, such as UIPath, Avast or Telerik, to name just a few. It’s an extremely interesting ecosystem and still underexplored, so we’ve decided to shine a spotlight on Digital Health startups in the region (for broader real-time analysis of CEE startup activity, we recommend signing up to Marcin Szelag’s authoritative newsletter).

When it comes to Digital Health CEE has a lot of untapped potential. In our previous macro analysis of the European Digital Health ecosystem, we found that the CEE region ranked second to last in Digital Health VC funding. 92 Digital Health startups have been founded between 2010 and 2021, receiving a total of around €234m in VC funding. The region is undercapitalized and, at €500k, has the lowest median funding per startup in Europe. To put this in perspective, in the UK, the median funding amount per Digital Health startup is €12.3m, while it’s €9.4m in France and €8.7m for DACH.

But as an earlier analysis of ours pointed to, Digital Health in Europe has entered a huge period of growth and, as such, we expect to see a lot more activity in CEE in the future.

The data: 92 startups that shape the Digital Health ecosystem in the CEE region

The aim of this blog is neither to be exhaustive nor to rank startups, but rather to take a first stab at charting the main characteristics of the CEE Digital Health startup ecosystem. In line with our previous methodology for our geo-mapping, we’ve included both funded and unfunded companies that were founded in the last ten years. We’ve used Dealroom.co, Crunchbase and our own CRM as the main data sources.

Read the full article at speedinvest.com/blog/digital-health-in-europe-the-untapped-potential-of-cee

Europe and the US are two of the main hubs within the Femtech industry. To compare specific insights from these two locations, we interviewed two Femtech experts.

Deepali Nangia, Venture Partner at Speedinvest and Co-Founder of Alma Angels, is based in London and has extensive experience investing in the UK and Europe. Vanessa Larco, Partner at New Enterprise Associates, is based in San Francisco and brings a valuable view of the Femtech industry in the US.

How did Femtech evolve in the last years?

In Europe, Femtech is still a large and emerging category in which innovative startups – such as Clue (Germany), Ava (Swiss), Natural Cycles (Sweden), Inne (Germany), Daye and Elvie (UK) – grew incredibly well and where some exits have already happened, such as Kandy Therapeutics (non-hormonal oral compound sold to Bayer in 2020).
In the UK, Femtech has literally exploded in the last few years with startups in cycle mapping. Some examples are Moody Month, a daily health and wellness tracker for women, and Wild.AI, a cycle mapping app for female athletes, just to name a few. We have also seen some startups that target data collection. Juno Bio helps women learn more about their vaginal microbiomes, while Tuune provides women with personalized contraception. Other interesting ones are using novel biomarkers for age, such as Glycanage, to diagnose a woman’s biological age with lifestyle interventions to help support women through these life stages.

The main focus in the last years has been on providing women with products and services through their different life stages, says Deepali Nangia. Examples of these products or services are alternatives to HRT, pelvic floor trainers, at-home tests to improve diagnosis, community-based support, telemedicine and chat-based platforms to democratize access to care. Key is that all should ultimately lead to better and more data collection around women’s health outcomes, which will be used for personalized medicine, democratized access and cheaper care for women, adds Nangia.

In the US, according to Vanessa Larco, Progyny IPO was a “game changer for the market” and helped investors “get past the perception that Femtech is a niche market”.

Which trends do you foresee in the Femtech space?

In the US, Larco mentions three main trends:

1. Contraception still has a lot of untapped potential as “one-size does not fit all and it’s a large market”.
2. Even though fertility has already seen the launch of a few VC-backed startups, it continues to be an exciting market.
3. There is still a huge gap in menopause, where the population is massively underserved.

In the EU, the taboo topics seem to be slowly breaking.

I am seeing many new concepts targeting old taboo topics such as still birth, abortion care at home, incontinence and post-partum support. says Nangia.

Other trends include screening solutions around ovarian cancer and instant, at home, STD testing kits. D&I is also part of the innovations we’re seeing with startups focusing on ethnic minority groups to make healthcare affordable and accessible.

What are the main things you look at when assessing a Femtech opportunity?

The first thing that both investors look at when assessing investment opportunities in Femtech is the team (including the product-founder fit, i.e the relevance of the founding team’s background and story). Then Nangia looks more specifically at the go-to-market strategy and the revenue model. Willingness to pay is usually a tricky topic when addressing European markets, hence testing this willingness early on – in the user research and MVP stages – can be a game-changer.
In the US, Larco pays particular attention to the market size, the pain point tackled (and why it hasn’t been tackled earlier), as well as the product / service experience.

What advice would you give to founders who want to launch a Femtech startup?

Be very clear on who your target demographic is, why they need this product and how eager they are to acquire it, says Larco.

According to Nangia, “Femtech lends itself to building a community but communities are very hard to monetize.” In terms of distribution channel, for D2C Digital Health businesses “selling to the NHS has long sales cycles, but adds huge credibility”.

All in all, the perspective and evolution of Femtech in the coming years is very promising as there are still many underserved populations and pain points unaddressed yet. We hope these insights gave you food for thought! Feel free to ping us if you’d like to discuss the industry and/or know a great Femtech startup we should talk to.