In 2022, Singapore secured its place because the main market and hub for femtech improvements with 32 corporations based and working within the nation, a forty five per cent enhance from the earlier 12 months. Its neighbouring nation Malaysia caught up as runner-up with 12 corporations; this quantity is a 500 per cent enhance from the earlier 12 months within the nation.

In response to a report launched by ladies’s wellness options supplier Fermata, there was a gentle development in femtech corporations throughout the Southeast Asian (SEA) area, together with the Philippines (9 corporations), Thailand (six corporations), Indonesia (5 corporations), and Vietnam (4 corporations).

Nonetheless, for rising markets resembling Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, the expansion had been stagnant since final 12 months, when the report acknowledged difficulties find femtech corporations working within the international locations via desktop analysis.

For these markets, the report identified that there’s a want “to be more focused on general public health issues, period poverty, and hygiene safety” which could be the rationale why femtech business shouldn’t be rising quickly. Political instability resembling the Myanmar coup in 2021 additionally additional escalated the difficulty of interval poverty as ladies struggled to afford interval merchandise because of rising costs.

Additionally Learn: Femtech: VC interest grows as new frontier for women’s health beckons

Coined in 2012, femtech (“female technology”) was outlined as an business of tech corporations that addressed ladies well being’s wants. Corporations within the sector could be divided into the B2C and B2B classes, every of them with its personal distinctive merchandise and goal audiences.

B2C corporations largely offered providers and merchandise associated to sexual wellness, sexual well being and intimate care, fertility and infertility, interval well being, perimenopause and menopause, being pregnant and post-partum, and normal ladies’s well being. These corporations may implement a component of e-commerce in how they distribute their providers and merchandise to prospects.

Within the B2B sector, tech corporations labored along with establishments within the medical business to offer instruments for diagnostics and testing.

From coverage to social media

This led to a giant query: What did it take to construct a sturdy ecosystem for femtech startups?

Singapore was already well-known as a number one startup ecosystem on a world scale, in accordance with numerous stories. Nonetheless, within the case of femtech, there have been a number of components that helped safe its standing as a femtech hub.

There have been generally identified components resembling Singapore’s potential to turn into a “great” take a look at mattress for brand spanking new innovation earlier than an organization can additional broaden to a different market. However Fermata highlighted “societal, legislative, and governmental forces that have created new avenues for dialogue in women’s health and wellness.”

Additionally Learn: Overcoming advertising woes and other challenges for the femtech industry

There have been two methods during which these conversations have been being dropped at the general public:

1. Analysis and Growth

In December 2020, The Singapore Nationwide Analysis Basis launched the Analysis Innovation Enterprise Plan 2025 (RIE 2025) with an approximate S$25 billion (US$18 billion) funds. There have been two analysis domains which can be related to the femtech business: Human Well being and Potential (HHP) and Sensible Nation and Digital Economic system (SNDE).

“Supporting research and development funding in this field is critical to tackling the issue of women’s health at the root,” the report said.

2. Social and media dialog on fertility

There have been a number of notable moments in social media and media that helped to skyrocket the dialogue on ladies’s well being, creating additional consciousness and opening up new enterprise alternatives. In early 2021, following a report about Singapore’s declining fertility rate, social media was rife with a dialog concerning fertility and household planning. This included an online petition and Instagram account MyEggsMyTime by consumer Emma Zhang.

What’s subsequent for femtech in SEA?

Seeing how the femtech business in SEA had progressed up to now few years, Fermata predicted that the business will proceed to develop in SEA.

There have been a number of factors that the report believes might be related:

1. Schooling and consciousness actions will proceed to give attention to taboo and stigmatised subjects in ladies’s well being. This contains occasions and conferences on ladies’s well being

2. Funding programmes for analysis on ladies’s well being and copy will proceed to flourish

3. A larger number of B2B options within the femtech business

“We will see industry players rethinking existing and established markets, while others explore completely uncharted or ‘white space’ opportunities,” the report closed.

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