Bangalore, India, 23rd October 2019: Hiro Mashita-led Japanese investment firm M&S Partners has invested in Healofy, India’s largest and fastest-growing Women Social Network. Healofy connects millions of women across different stages of life – from getting married, to becoming a mother, and beyond. Having started as a pregnancy and parenting community in 2016, Healofy seeks to empower women by enabling them to consume relatable information, create content, and showcase their skills sets. This peer-to-peer platform also enables women to connect and influence other like-minded women based on similar language, location, life-stage, as well as interests such as fashion, food, fitness, lifestyle, learning different skill sets, and earning from home.
Prior to this, the Bangalore-based startup has raised $9.5 million from Omidyar Network India, BabyTree Group (01761.HK, China’s Largest Parenting Platform, a Public company), BAce Capital – a fund backed by Alibaba’s Ant Financial Services Group, and angel investors. With over 2 million app downloads, the app has successfully created a strong community of over 500,000 Daily Active Users (DAUs) and 1 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) on their Android app, exhibiting industry-leading engagement and retention. The platform also sees 1.5 million+ monthly web visits.
According to the “Toward Gender Equity Online: Research with the Next Billion Users” report by Google India, “women are reluctant to network online on social platforms due to the fear of harassment and lack of a safe community”. Additionally, women often struggle to find relevant content and supportive communities online. Healofy’s mission is to create a vernacular social network exclusively for Indian women to feel informed, safe and empowered, allowing them to consume, connect, and transact in a trusted space.
Healofy is addressing this by bringing Indian women together on a platform where their opinions are heard and their personalities are valued. Catering to Indian women across Tier 2, 3 & 4 cities through content in their native language, Healofy offers content on various topics of women’s interests in 9 languages – English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.
What makes Healofy’s communities unique is that they facilitate smoother peer-to-peer interaction in users’ mother tongues, by using innovations which include allowing a user to type vernacular words using English characters, which the app converts on the fly into the regional script.
Further on, Healofy envisions to help women attain financial independence by helping them earn from home via network e-commerce. By allowing women to form meaningful connections and relationships with other women in the Healofy community, the aim is to replicate the offline experience of networking and ‘shopping together’ in the online world.
“The societal impact Healofy is having is immense and has resonated strongly with their users. Led by the passionate founders, Gaurav and Shubham, we believe that this impressive team is capable of disrupting the online behavior of the next 100 Million Indian women, and we are excited to be part of this journey with them.” said Hiro Mashita, Director, M&S Partners.
“It has been an incredible journey for us over the last three years, impacting the lives of millions of women. At Healofy, we are committed to providing a safe and empowering online environment for women in the country. We are excited to welcome M&S Partners to be part of the journey.” said Gaurav Aggarwal, CEO and Co-Founder of Healofy.
