FemTech Market Map of Southeast Asia 2021
Guest blog post by fermata Inc., originally published here
Women represent at least half of the world’s population (49.6%*) and at a biological level they experience life-changing journeys from menstruation through to menopause.
The term “femtech” was coined in 2013 consisting of the words “Female” and “Technology”, and has since grown into a booming industry of technology companies addressing women’s health needs.
In 2019, the femtech industry generated $820.6 million in global revenue and received $592 million in venture capital investment, according to PitchBook.
From 2019 to 2020, fermata Inc. published femtech market maps displaying the year over year growth of companies that have entered the space. However, these companies are mainly from North America and Europe with only a few from other parts of the world.
fermata Singapore is the sister brand of fermata Inc., Japan’s largest femtech ecosystem that launched in October 2020. Our mission is to equip women with tools and knowledge about their bodies to achieve their career and personal life goals with femtech products and services.
Here’s our Market Map for femtech companies in Southeast Asia in Q1 2021:
Source: Our World in Data: Gender Ratio (2019) written by Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser
CATEGORY BREAKDOWN
Sexual Wellness
Startups offering products that keep you safe, informed and help women own their sexual wellness. Ease Healthcare, for example, delivers birth control, emergency contraception and other sensitive health services to your doorstep so women can access them online discreetly. In Singapore, there are several online marketplaces for female pleasure toys like Maison Mika and Good Vibes, while platforms like The DellaHQ articulate innovation, trends, and business in the sexual wellness space.
Fertility and Infertility
Startups offering services to improve a woman’s chance for conception, like IVF and egg freezing, as well as products that help women take control of their fertility goals. Luminous, for instance, offers online fertility coaching in Malaysia whereas startups like Yesmom and Fig offer at-home hormone tests so women can explore their options and be proactive with their fertility health.
Period Health
Startups offering feminine care products designed to empower women to live without limits during their period. They mainly focus on her three main concerns with existing solutions: comfort, health side-effects, and unsustainability of single-use plastics. Ira Concept from Thailand sells organic, plant-based pads on a subscription model. Cocmau offers reusable menstrual cups in Vietnam.
Menopause
80% of women suffer from at least one symptom of menopause such as mood swings, interrupted sleep, and irritability. Femtech solutions such as the Elocare wearable in Singapore can help women monitor, treat, and manage their symptoms with ease throughout their midlife stage. Still, menopausal care is an untapped space that offers impactful opportunities as women approaching peri- and menopause now has more purchasing power than ever.
Pregnancy and Postpartum
Startups offering solutions during and after pregnancy, from leak-proof underwear for postpartum bleeding to wearables monitoring the baby’s heart rate. There are limited femtech companies dedicated to helping women at this stage, with only one company found in Singapore called Biorithm, which provides a remote maternity care platform to improve perinatal outcomes.
Wellness
Startups focused on women’s health treat general health problems like stress, anxiety, and loneliness. Oftentimes, they either help with stress relief (like pleasure toys do) or treat the consequential result of stress, like exacerbated symptoms of PMS. In Southeast Asia, wellness is not a big focus but there are several companies helping bring attention to this rising problem such as Zazazu in Singapore that offers a women-exclusive online community.
Men’s Health
Femtech products and services are designed for women specifically, that is because, in innovation, women are often a feature while men are the default. Men’s reproductive health has its own problems to address, like erectile dysfunction and andropause (a.k.a male menopause). In Southeast Asia, Noah and AndSons in Singapore offer telemedicine for men , providing online consultations, discreet medication deliveries, and ongoing care.
Femtech Startups in Southeast Asia (separated by health categories)
In 2021, there are 41 femtech companies in Southeast Asia - a small portion compared to the 318 global femtech companies in 2020. Singapore acts as the leading country with 24 femtech companies, followed by Thailand (6 companies). This comes as no surprise as Singapore is at the heart of the ASEAN1 region and holds the title of a world-leading technology center. Femtech startups are able to find talent, capital and support from the government more easily, while also benefiting from the region’s greater consumer purchasing power.
Femtech Companies in Singapore (separated by health categories)
Due to the pandemic, there have been more opportunities brought into the country for those who have been wanting to set up a business. In December 2020, the Singapore Government pledged SG$150 million to boost the startup section. This catalyst for new opportunities may have been the reason for more than a handful of femtech startups last year, focusing on online prescription deliveries and at-home monitoring services.
Singapore has the most femtech companies to date
Singapore’s healthcare system has been ranked as the top two in the world, with Hong Kong in the lead, for a number of years. It’s frequently referred to as the "miracle healthcare system" in terms of its efficiency, life expectancy and relative cost. Despite this polished system, a boom of health startups has appeared to address people’s desire for more judgment-free services.
Particularly in the sexual wellness space, we see more startups within the last year offering at-home STD test kits and birth control delivery highlighting privacy and discretion as to their main value-added.
"Companies such as DearDoc, Ease and Ferne Health guarantee to provide something that a renowned healthcare system cannot when it comes to sexual health- open-mindedness. There is still a heavy link of culture, religious and family honour tied to a woman's sexual health that can sometimes be present in a physical medical room, leaving women feeling ashamed and judged. This new idea of a sexual healthcare system allows women to feel as though they can take back control for themselves," says Francesca Geary , fermata Singapore’s PR Manager.
Other femtech categories that are growing in Singapore are within period health and fertility care. However, there is a scarce activity in menopause care, despite the country having one of the lowest fertility rates and is reported to be one of the most rapidly ageing populations in the world (SIM Global Education, 2019).
Fermata Inc.’s Global Business Manager, Lia Camargo, adds that innovation in the menopause space is lacking, no matter where you look in the world. “There are very few studies relating to menopausal symptoms in women and how best to approach changes in the human body after age 50+. This is an area that lacks innovation and funding, which is where Southeast Asian startups could make an impact globally,” says Camargo.
What about Cambodia, Burma, and Laos?
Unfortunately, we could not find any femtech startups in these countries. Unlike developed countries that support innovation, less developed countries have to focus more on public health issues like having access to basic healthcare. In these countries, social impact and non-profit organizations like Green Lady are the main leaders giving women and girls access to menstrual hygiene.
Is femtech considered late to arrive in Southeast Asia?
Femetch companies exist because women are not getting the proper care they need. A large reason for this is gender bias in medicine, which is entrenched in all countries around the world. There are studies suggesting that women are more likely to be misdiagnosed, ignored, or denied by doctors, causing well-documented harm. For instance, doctors and nurses prescribe less pain medication to women than men after surgery, despite reporting more frequent and severe pain levels. Moreover, there are five times the number of studies about male erectile dysfunction compared to painful sex in women.
Fermata Inc.’s Founder, Dr. Amina Sugimoto, shares her perspective as a doctorate in public Health (DrPH), “When it comes to comparing Western and Eastern countries and how they should be, there is often a bias towards a western-centric point of view. Instead of comparing regions of completely different cultures, religions, and lifestyles, I hope we can take a localized approach to public health and assess what each country and its citizens need. Instead of asking whether femtech is late to arrive in Southeast Asia compared to its western originator, let’s ask what type of femtech products should be the focus in which country based on the population’s needs and readiness.”
1. Cultural and social taboos around sexual health
Openly discussing women’s sexual health and fertility issues are still heavily taboo in Asia. We believe this stems from uncomprehensive sex education programs in schools that do not prepare young adults to exercise their reproductive rights in present and future stages of life. Many counties in Southeast Asia also do not have a national sex education requirement, therefore each high school is at liberty to dictate how they teach about reproduction and contraception use if they choose to teach about it at all.
Even in countries that offer sex-ed curriculums, many institutions teach sex education from a perspective that emphasizes the negative consequences of sex and does not cover positive aspects or promote students’ critical thinking skills. In those that are centered on abstinence-only education, countries have experienced higher rates of unwanted pregnancies. In fact, Vietnam has one of the top five highest abortion rates in the world and the highest in Asia.
In Singapore, the Ministry of Education has recently updated their sex education curriculum to go beyond abstinence and teenage pregnancies to be more inclusive; teaching topics such as consent and how to apply it as well as influences of online media and sexuality.
In Thailand, Unicef’s ‘Review of Comprehensive Sexuality Education in Thailand’ elaborates that institutions stress topics related to the prevention of teenage pregnancy and STIs , while topics related to sexual rights, sexual development, and bullying are less often taught. Cases like these inadequate sex education programs are also common in other countries, and they lead to young adults lacking the correct understanding of their own sexuality and unequipped with analytical skills to make safe and effective decisions for their sexual health.
2. Lack of education leads to myths and misunderstanding
Many popular myths have discouraged women from learning about their bodies and accessing better care. For example, the concept of abstinence before marriage is laser-focused in Asian cultures. That breeds a culture of hymen preservation, where anything that involves sticking something up your vagina is thought to damage your hymen - proof for unmarried women of their virginity. So even though virginity is a social construct and its meaning can vary from person to person, adoption of tampons or any products inserted vaginally is often socially rejected.
In some Asian countries like Vietnam and Thailand, tampons are very hard to find whereas, in other countries like the United States, 70% of the female population regularly use tampons.
In Singapore, we witness this resistance in our interaction with customers, too. In our recent online survey, 177 female respondents were asked, "Are you comfortable inserting a tampon inside?" to which 74% answered “no.” This aligns with cultural taboos around period stigma. If menstrual hygiene is a part of sex education programs in school, we believe the public would be more receptive to innovation in women’s reproductive health.
3. Stigma against vaginal health makes it harder to develop femtech further
Innovations in female hygiene care are less likely to be adopted if women are not taught how the basic female reproductive system works. This causes girls to develop anxiety and self-consciousness around their vaginal health because they do not have the knowledge and normalized discussion around personal care. Internal-use products like tampons and menstrual cups are harder to convince a woman to try than a sanitary pad; furthermore, high-tech pleasure toys and fertility trackers inserted vaginally also require the user to be familiar with her reproductive system and open-minded enough to give them a try.
Predictions for femtech in Southeast Asia
GDP of the ASEAN region has been skyrocketing for a few years now, reflecting the region’s thriving economy. With many femtech options available from around the world, all women should have the freedom to choose which reproductive health products they prefer. However, the limited availability of femtech products in Southeast Asia (as seen in Market Map) and the entrenched taboos around sexual health may act as deterrents for women to learn about the solutions that could improve their everyday lives.
Moreover, the related economic downturn caused by global crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic, can impact women more severely than men, which makes achieving gender equality and reducing stigmas against women’s health unseen and less of a priority. According to the World’ Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Gender Gap Report, women with children struggle more with stress, anxiety around job insecurity and difficulty maintaining work-life balance due to a longer “double-shift” of paid and unpaid work, especially with school closures and limited availability of at-home care services (GGGR 2021, World Economic Forum). On a national level, countries that enforce gender-positive recovery policies look towards these challenges and help improve employment prospects for women
On a personal level, women and even their partners can help themselves by learning how to build more resilience, prioritize their self-care routines and look towards brands that can help equip them with effective wellness tool and strategies.
fermata Inc. is bringing access to femtech products in Asia that empower women with knowledge about their bodies, starting with Japan and Singapore. Since 2019 in Japan, fermata has brought femtech to the mainstream. Fermata Inc.’s Global Business Manager, Lia Camargo says that “we at fermata inc. hopes to help more people throughout Asia take new approaches and ownership regarding their own health. We are hopeful as Southeast Asia continues its trajectory as one of the fastest-growing economies, that femtech innovations and destigmatization of women’s bodies will follow, too.
Criteria for being on the market map:
● Not IPO
● Launched after 2000
● Assess using scorecard
Disclaimer
The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect the views of Fermata Asia Pte. This market map was created with data gathered from public information by Viracha Poolvaraluk and Francesca Geary from the fermata Singapore team. Although Fermata Asia Pte. takes every reasonable step to ensure that the data thus compiled is accurately reflected in this Market Map, fermata employees provide the data “as is, as available.”
For further questions or collaborations, please reach out to us at Singapore@hellofermata.com
fermata inc. is a Tokyo- and Singapore-based femtech/femcare marketplace. We connect global health tech companies with retail and research partners in Asia and help consumers access high-quality products from around the world. Our mission is to “transform taboos into triumphs''; we empower people to make choices and use tools that are right for them to improve their health and overall wellness. fermata has both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores, and a growing network of retailers. We are also actively working with the Japanese government to update regulations around medical devices that impact women’s health.