[100 Emerging Women Leaders] How Navneet Kaur is driving innovation, collaboration and community-building in femtech

Navneet Kaur was enjoying a successful stint in her family business, leading a team of 70 members, when a post-pandemic self-introspection sent her career path into startup mode.

“At the time, I started to think whether it was something I really wanted to do in the next five years. I was passionate about healthcare but did not know much about femtech,” she tells HerStory.

Her own challenges with health helped her make a decision to look at starting up in this sector.

“Till I turned 26 years old, I battled severe period pain. I wouldn’t be able to move out of bed for two days straight. Doctors told me the pain would go once I got married and had a baby. Everyone at home would tell me to pop a pill and bear it,” she recalls.

Kaur says that once she started following seed cycling and cycle syncing and made certain lifestyle changes, her body started reacting differently.

Addressing gaps in women’s health

Armed with this knowledge, she researched more on women’s health and also learned from her cousin who was building a company in maternal health in the US. By now, Kaur was intrigued and came across femtech—using technology for better health of women.

“In 2022, I decided to exit from my operations role in the family business and during my research realised that there were significant gaps in women’s health research and funding. Lack of awareness and stigma were the biggest barriers,” she explains.

Kaur started FemTech India that works on three verticals. To build awareness and education, it organises podcasts, releases periodic newsletters, and events for founders in this sector. These platforms are important to drive conversations in the space.

The second vertical, based on a revenue model, offers market access to help companies in the sector grow locally and sell globally, and assist global companies in entering the Indian market. Focus areas include women’s health, femtech, biotech, life sciences, consumer brands and medtech devices.

The third is the Founders’ Cohort Program, designed to help scale femtech startups.

“We work with founders to develop and execute a comprehensive business strategy, achieve product-market fit, and focus on market access and research while addressing key challenges and opportunities in the women’s health space,” she elaborates.

Companies who are part of the cohort will have access to mentors who have built and scaled large businesses in India and globally. They can showcase their business model and pitch their ideas and get feedback from investors.

Learning from research

FemTech India has 90 Indian and 25 global clients and is currently piloting four projects due for launch in six months.

After working with diverse clients for over a year, Kaur realised that there was a lack of research to understand the kind of products the Indian consumer wants. Even today, when someone mentions femtech, they associate it with period products.

“To this end, we conducted the largest study in the consumer brand space focusing on how much women understand femtech beyond menstrual health. Menopause is also a big category where this is lack of awareness. In India, employee healthcare is limited to maternal health and not on menopause,” she explains.

This report also delved into different aspects of preventive healthcare, what Indian consumers want and how much are women willing to spend, especially when a majority of healthcare decisions are taken by men.

“During our research, we discovered that women in Tier-II and III cities are actually willing to spend on healthcare but don’t have the resources to do so. There is a lack of infrastructure and access to menstrual products as compared to a city where you can get a period product in under 10 minutes,” she says.

According to Kaur, women’s health is the “next big” opportunity but scaling preventive care models is important in this revolution. She believes that FemTech India’s founder’s cohort programme will help companies raise funds and also scale.

Last year, it released the first-ever book spotlighting founders in the sector. Kaur has also been invited to be part of the the UNFPA Equity Alliance 2030.

Since femtech has been gaining ground only in the past few years, the main challenge, Kaur says, is to be taken seriously.

“We haven’t seen many successful startups in this sector. There are few women mentors in the health tech and women’s health space. Bringing awareness to this category has been challenging,” she adds.

As a young woman entrepreneur, Kaur reveals it has not been an easy ride. There were times of despondency, when she questioned her change of career–leaving a billion-dollar industry to build in a sector that had not gained wide acceptance, yet! But she overcame the self-doubt and persevered.

FemTech India remains bootstrapped.

“It’s important to have financial support for what you are building. You can have great aspirations to change the world, but you need money to drive it,” she concludes.

(The story has been updated to correct a typo.)