[Funding alert] Women social network Healofy raises investment from M&S Partners

Women social network platform, Healofy, on Wednesday announced it has raised an undisclosed amount from Japanese investment firm M&S Partners.

Prior to this, the Bengaluru-based startup had raised $9.5 million from Omidyar Network India, BabyTree Group, BAce Capital (a fund backed by Alibaba’s Ant Financial Services Group), and other angel investors, around March this year. 

Started as a pregnancy and parenting community in September 2016, by Gaurav Aggarwal and Shubham Maheshwari, 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.

“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.

The app claims to be witnessing over 500,000 Daily Active Users (DAUs) and one million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) on their Android app. The platform also claims to witness more than 1.5 million monthly web visits.

This comes after Google had removed the Healofy app from its Play Store, for violating developer policy, in May. Also, Facebook had banned Healofy’s English page on its platform. 

“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.

The company also claims to be engaging with Indian women across Tier II, III and IV cities through content in their native language. The platform supports nine languages including English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

Further on, Healofy envisions to help women attain financial independence by helping them earn from home via network ecommerce.

(Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan)

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