National Startup Day: the rise of women’s health startups in India

When Aditi Mittal was diagnosed with cancer for the second time, she discovered a truth that millions of Indian women face: healthcare wasn't built for them. 

Instead of support, the system offered fragmented care, unclear costs, and an approach that treated women's health as an afterthought rather than a priority.

In 2022, Mittal and her husband Sanchit Agarwal founded Newmi Care, a women's health platform that addresses various aspects of women’s health.

Her journey marks a meaningful shift. Conversations around women’s wellness, conditions such as PCOS, endometriosis, anaemia, thyroid disorders, and menopause that affect millions of Indian women are getting louder.

On National Startup Day, we speak to founders in the ecosystem to understand their roles in reframing the women’s health narrative in the country.

Newmi Care 

”Women don't delay care because they are unaware; they delay because healthcare rarely meets them where they are. Stigma, time, poverty, fear of judgment, and unclear costs all create friction,” explains Mittal.

Newmi Care has rapidly established itself as a comprehensive women's health platform that combines retail services, physical clinics, and corporate wellness programmes under one roof. 

“Our programmes focus on education-led nudges, bundling care plans with screenings, and community-based outreach that normalises check-ups before symptoms appear and also open dialogue around these topics without judgement and fear,” says Mittal.

Positioning itself as a mass player, Newmi Care’s plans are designed for the middle-income pyramid, starting at just Rs 1,000 with a retention rate of 40%. It is also integrated with the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, helping with data collation and records management.

Gynoveda

Founded by Rachana and Vishal Gupta, Gynoveda integrates Ayurveda, technology, and education to address fertility concerns, PCOS, and menstrual health disorders.

The Mumbai-based startup created the “Period Test”, a gynaecology bot using AI to identify period abnormalities with 85% accuracy. It has been used by three lakh women so far.

Gynoveda is now a super specialist Ayurveda fertility clinic chain, with 60 clinics in 19 states and 30 cities. 

Rachana Gupta shares that over 20,000 "Gynoveda babies" have been born to women who conceived after treatment. Its Circle of Sisterhood has become India's largest Facebook community for women's health, where thousands of women share their journeys, results, and hope with each other.

In 2024, Gynoveda completed a landmark PCOS clinical trial involving 200+ women that demonstrated significant improvements in hormonal markers and cycle regularity. Its FDA-registered, GMP-certified facilities undergo toxicology testing on every formulation.

"As a category creator, the burden of proof is on us. We've taken a ruthlessly evidence-driven approach: clinical studies, randomised controlled trials, published research,” she says.

Veera Health

When Shobhita Narain was diagnosed with PCOS, she understood that the journey would be a long one. She and her sister Shashwata realised how fragmented PCOS care is, with most interventions focusing on managing symptoms while root causes were rarely addressed.

“There was also a serious lack of education, with women not aware of the long-term risks of PCOS. Another gap is the absence of technology-enabled, day-to-day support. Finally, mental health issues like anxiety, depression and body image issues are largely ignored while treating PCOS,” says Narain.

This realisation led the sisters to launch Veera Health in August 2020.

Veera Health’s digital therapeutics platform combines evidence-based medical care, nutrition therapy, lifestyle coaching, and doctor support. 

"When PCOS is framed as a weight or cosmetic problem, women are treated too late or in fragments. PCOS is a chronic endocrine and metabolic condition affecting insulin sensitivity, fertility, mental health, and cognitive performance. Poorly managed PCOS increases long-term risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and endometrial cancer,” explains Narain.

The startup's Net Promoter Score stands at 85, compared to a healthcare industry average of around 10. Their supplements are rated 4.7 out of 5, and 93% of members say Veera is the most effective solution they've tried.

Its clinical outcomes have been published by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, showing statistically significant improvements. The company is the only women's hormonal health company with such peer-reviewed validation.

Periwinkle Technologies

Despite being almost entirely preventable with early screening, cervical cancer remains the second most common cancer among Indian women. This paradox drove Veena Moktali and Koustubh Naik to start Pune-based Periwinkle Technologies in 2013.

Their innovation, Smart Scope® CX, is a handheld digital device that conducts cervical health screening in less than 10 minutes. The portable, electricity-free device can be operated by trained health workers, with AI-enabled image analysis providing immediate, colour-coded results.

"Lab-based methods like Pap Smear and HPV DNA testing are multi-step, expert-dependent, and time-consuming. Samples are collected in one setting, processed elsewhere, and results communicated later—often requiring multiple visits. Each step increases the likelihood of loss to follow-up,” explains Moktali.

With 80-85% sensitivity, nearly double that of Pap smears in some resource-constrained settings, the device has screened thousands of women across India since its 2019 launch. SmartScopes are now installed in healthcare facilities across multiple states.

Beyond detecting pre-cancer, the device identifies benign conditions like infections and polyps. "We intentionally included detection of benign conditions in Smart Scope® CX AI's mandate. This helped us change the narrative and encourage more women to come forth for gynaecological checkups rather than just cancer testing,” Moktali said.

The visual, colour-coded report enables immediate patient understanding and family communication—crucial for a disease poorly understood in many communities.

Bringing menopause into mainstream conversation

Registered in Chennai, Miyara Health, founded by scientists Gayatri Muthukrishnan and Sanjana Rao in 2022, is changing the narrative around menopause that is often dismissed as a manageable transition.

Miyara combines AI-powered chatbots, personalised health assessments, and self-paced symptom management programmes through which women can access evidence-based guidance 24/7 for insomnia, hot flashes, stress relief, and incontinence.

“At Miyara, we see technology as an enabler, not a replacement for human care. Midlife health, especially perimenopause and menopause, is deeply personal, emotional, and often confusing, so AI helps us listen better at scale by identifying patterns, flagging risks, and offering timely, evidence-based guidance,” says Muthukrishnan. She asserts that the heart of Miyara is human with its community, healthcare professionals, experts and coaches, and scientists who interpret that data with empathy and context. 

Miyara has reached over 30,000 women across 20+ global corporates and communities, with its social media engagement growing to 8,500+. Its AI Companion App, currently in beta, has already seen 400+ downloads within the first two months of launch, signalling strong early adoption.

Breaking systemic barriers

Despite their path-breaking efforts, the founders face similar obstacles, including cultural stigma, fragmented care, lack of awareness, funding gaps, and policy inertia.

"Between ages 15 and 55, a woman experiences 400 menstrual cycles and navigates pregnancy, motherhood, and menopause, yet conventional healthcare treats these as isolated events, not interconnected phases,” says Rachana Gupta.

“Preventive women's healthcare must be embedded into primary care and public health policy, not treated as an add-on. The recent government initiative, “Swasth Nari, Sashakt Parivar Abhiyaan" represents a step forward, but much more is needed,” emphasises Mittal.

Veera Health’s Narain argues that PCOS needs formal recognition as a chronic medical condition in public health policy, not as a lifestyle or fertility issue. 

“Insurance coverage for PCOS-related care—nutrition counselling, mental health support, hormone management, and preventive testing—would dramatically improve continuity of care.”

Periwinkle's Moktali is vocal about cervical cancer's systemic failures: “When screening services are available only at distant facilities, many women rely on male family members to accompany them. Preventive care then becomes a logistical negotiation rather than an individual health decision.”

The funding landscape also reflects these systemic issues. 

According to data from Tracxn, women’s healthtech startups in India have witnessed $271 million in funding to date, representing 2% of global funding in the space to date, highlighting a huge gap despite having a higher underserved population. 

However, over the last two years, this space witnessed $49.9 million in funding, accounting for 25% of the $200 million raised in the past five years. 2025 alone saw $40.5 million in funding in this space, a 334% increase from $9.34 million witnessed in 2024.

"Investor hesitancy persists due to taboos surrounding menstruation, menopause, and sexual wellness, alongside challenges like limited clinical data and cultural barriers that obscure ROI for mainstream VCs. Yet the segment poses untapped potential amid evolving mindsets,” says Neha Singh, Co-founder, Tracxn.

What success looks like

For Newmi Care, success means serving over a million women annually in the next three-five years, detecting chronic women's health conditions early, reducing OPD healthcare costs by 30-40%, and building India's largest women's health data platform.

Rachana Gupta sees menopause as "the next frontier that deserves innovation, empathy, and resources.” 

“The current approach is inadequate: hormone replacement with unclear long-term safety, or simply telling women to endure symptoms as 'natural aging.' Ayurveda offers a framework for supporting this transition,” she says.

Veera Health measures success through real health outcomes: "Three out of four members regularise periods and lose up to 5 kg within the first two months. But success also means credibility—our clinical outcomes published in peer-reviewed journals, our NPS of 85, and 70% of members saying they would be 'highly disappointed' if Veera didn't exist,” says Narain.

"Success includes women seeking regular preventive checkups without fear of financial burdens, empowered frontline health workers to deliver point-of-care testing, and technology-enabled frameworks to increase access to expert knowledge,” says Moktali.

Miyara's Muthukrishnan says: "When midlife women start speaking openly about menopause without stigma, whether in communities or workplaces, we know we're creating lasting change."

The road ahead

The founders are unanimous that women's health must be treated as public infrastructure, not private choice.

"In India, leaving prevention to private choice effectively means leaving it to affordability and access. When women's health fails, the impact doesn't remain personal. Late diagnosis increases treatment costs borne by the public health system, while illness or mortality disrupts household stability, affects children's education and nutrition, and deepens vulnerability,” Moktali adds.

Narain reiterates that women’s health is not a subset of healthcare but is one of its largest unmet needs. 

“Until investors and policymakers treat it with the same seriousness as diabetes or heart disease, we will continue to see delayed diagnoses, fragmented care, and preventable long-term outcomes. The demand is already there. The gap is in attention, research, and capital allocation,” she says.