Dec 22, 2022

Healofy, has raised ~$8M from BabyTree Group, the largest maternity and child-focused community (M&C) platform in China, BAce Capital, a fund anchored by Ant Financial Services Group and existing investor Omidyar Network India, an investment firm focused on social impact. Aiming to address the growing demand for relatable and credible content for Indian women in the age group of 21 to 35, Healofy was founded in September 2016 by Gaurav Aggarwal and Shubham Maheshwari, alumni of IIT Guwahati and NIT Warangal respectively. The company was initially focused on women’s health related categories (pre-conception, pregnancy, early child care) and has grown to become the leading women-centric app community in India. Healofy has created a strong community of over 500,000 Daily Active Users (DAUs) on their mobile app exhibiting strong engagement and retention. In its next phase, Healofy is expanding into newer categories -  fashion, food and lifestyle – and will be available in eight Indian languages Healofy intends to drive deeper community formation by focusing on user generated content (UGC) to create a network for like-minded women to consume content tailored to their preferences, forge strong relationships with members and freely share views on a wide range of topics. The company also plans to catalyze e-commerce for women in the smaller cities & towns by helping them transact online. “Women are the primary purchase decision makers in most Indian households. Our data shows they are social in their decision making underlining the importance of building trust through a strong network. To help them transact online, it is critical to innovate and provide for an online shopping experience similar to the offline world.Companies like BabyTree and Little Red Book in China have demonstrated that highly engaged networks can transition in to large commerce platforms. We are very excited to be partnering with our investors in our next phase of growth given their expertise in their respective markets,” said Gaurav Aggarwal, CEO, Healofy. “We believe in the potential of she-economy in India. In China, leveraging content and social features, BabyTree seized the first-mover advantage of serving M&C population. We believe the excellent Healofy team can grow aggressively in this sector.” said Huainan Wang, founder and CEO of BabyTree,” What impressed me the most is Healofy’s founders’ capability in product design and user engagement. I believe that they will not only become a leader in terms of traffic, but also establish a strong business proposition.” "Healofy is a unique platform that empowers Indian women to harness the power of mobile internet to discuss meaningful issues in a trusted environment, thereby building a strong knit community with great purchasing potential. The BAce team is deeply integrated with India and China's internet ecosystem, and we are thrilled to build Healofy's vision together." said Kshitij Karundia, Founder and Managing Partner, BAce Capital. Led by Ant Financial and a distinguished group of investors from India, China andtheUS, BAce Capital is focused on investing and empowering early Indian start-ups. "Our research has consistently shown that one of the reasons women from the next half billion (NHB) segment shy away from coming online is the cultural taboos attached to the use of the internet that prevents them from gaining access to information, opportunity and community. Healofy’s growth suggests that it is possible to overcome these issues and we expect them to continue to help women build trust and comfort in using the internet." said Siddharth Nautiyal, Investment Partner, Omidyar Network India. The company plans to invest the funds to further strengthen the product, engineering and data science teams and scale its machine learning & personalization engine. Share this article: