The Lowdown, a London-based femtech startup, has secured $2.5 million in seed funding in a round led by pan-European VC Speedinvest. This is Speedinvest’s first venture into the field of women’s health technology.
The startup will invest the additional capital in product and commercial hires as well as the expansion of its distinctive community-first offering across Europe. It will intensify its platform for promoting female health within the community.
According to reports, only one-third of UK women have easy or convenient access to contraception. Due to a dearth of reliable information and clinical proof, this is worse for women globally. It is also uncertain how hormonal contraceptives affect women’s emotional and mental health.
The Lowdown’s world’s first contraception review platform dispels any uncertainties, from providing a comprehensive selection of pill brands to attempting to schedule an appointment for coil installation or removal. Everyone can gain information from their community about the advantages, disadvantages, advantages, and negative effects of contraception. Users can utilize this website to obtain their prescription for pills, interact with the on-site GP, and search and filter hundreds of real-world reviews.
The Lowdown’s founder, Alice Pelton, responded to TFN in an exclusive interview by saying, “Along with expanding our e-commerce and telemedicine businesses, we have exciting plans to reimagine the physical experience of reproductive and sexual health, which we’re very excited to announce towards the end of this year.”
They just debuted their German review site after building and boosting revenues in the UK and expanding their content platform across Europe.
This month, they expanded this service and introduced a line of consumer-recommended products to assist women in managing the adverse effects of contraception and symptoms related to vaginal health, such as breast discomfort, bacterial vaginosis, thrush, and UTIs. Through its community, The Lowdown frequently learns about innovative solutions first, allowing it to inform and educate its customers about these goods before its rivals or medical experts.
Alice, who oversees an eight-person team in Southwark, will utilize the seed funding to invest in strategic product and commercial recruitment and broaden The Lowdown’s appeal to additional European women. Marija Ziterbart, CTO, and the medical directors Drs. Melanie Davis-Hall and Frances Yarlett will be joined by the new hires. Five full-time employees and seven part-time employees make up its crew.
The Lowdown was started by Alice, a lone founder, in 2019 after she had crippling adverse effects from contraception for most of her twenties. Alice bootstrapped and developed The Lowdown’s contraception review platform to assist women like her in exchanging and comparing their experiences after becoming dissatisfied with the paucity of clinical data, the poor caliber of the advice she received, and difficulties accessing the methods of contraception she desired. She left her position there at the end of 2019 as The Lowdown gained popularity. She was working in product management and strategy for the publication News UK at the time.
The researchers created a set of digital tools, including an algorithm for recommending contraceptives based on review data and clinical evidence, that is utilized by thousands of women every week. The broadest selection of contraceptives available in the UK, including the contraceptive pill, patch, ring, injection, and the morning after pill, is delivered seamlessly the following day using these technologies.
The Lowdown is the first and only review site for contraception in the world. It has amassed a unique dataset of over 5,000 reviews and 250,000 data points on users’ actual interactions with more than 85 brands and techniques.
Image Credit: The Lowdown
