Eka Ventures

💡 What do 1,000 UK women really think about their health... and where do they spend?💡 This summer we partnered with YouGov to find out. We also mapped global investment + consumer trends across menstrual health, incontinence, and postnatal care: informed by the incredible founders at Hesta Health, DITTO Daily, and Cyclana Bio (ex. Cycle Therapeutics) 💪 1️⃣ Trust still drives how we take health decisions: 77% turn to the NHS website; 74% to GPs or pharmacists. 2️⃣ A generational shift is underway in how we inform ourselves about health: 13% of 18–34s use ChatGPT for health info (vs 7% overall). Younger women expect personalised, peer-led, interactive channels (Reddit, Inc. is on the rise). 3️⃣ Multi-channel is the norm: 70%+ use 3+ sources before making a health decision... and 42% of 25–34s use 5+. 4️⃣ Social drives awareness, but <5% buy via TikTok Shop. Boots UK + pharmacies remain conversion hubs. 5️⃣ Poor menstrual health impacts a lot of women... 1 in 3 women report severe+ daily life impacts; 8 in 10 for those with endo or PCOS. See the epic work DITTO Daily is doing in helping women manage their menstrual pain through nutrition (below!). Cyclana Bio (ex. Cycle Therapeutics) is also looking for menstrual health donations for some verryyy cool research.. see below! 6️⃣ Women are willing to spend out-of-pocket for better menstrual care. 1 in 4 spend >£10/month beyond pads/tampons; 79% buy pain relief. Big consumer health opportunity. 7️⃣ Incontinence is an essential category. 1 in 3 women experienced leaking urine in the last year; 1 in 3 spend >£10/month regardless of income. High need, low innovation. Jude is doing some awesome work here. 8️⃣ Postnatal care satisfaction masks gaps. 8 in 10 say they're very satisfied... but 7 in 10 would like more support across pelvic floor, sleep, and nutrition (and this is going up with parents who have had children more recently). Hesta Health is changing this! 9️⃣ Integrated, preventative care is overdue for women. Across menstrual, incontinence, and postnatal: women want continuum-of-care, not one-off fixes. 🔟 Women’s health is a $1T opportunity (McKinsey & Company), one of the largest and most under-invested in global health. 🏆 BONUS! Want to get involved with the epic companies in the space? 🏆 👶 Hesta Health: Recently given birth or know someone who has? Join the early user group (link below). Founded by Dr Sujitha & Amanda. 💊 DITTO Daily: Suffering from painful periods and/or want to learn more about the gap between women's health research and consumer products? Sign up to Ditto / follow on socials (below). Founded by Alice van der Schoot & Adam. 🩸 Cyclana Bio (ex. Cycle Therapeutics): Want to contribute menstrual fluid to women's health research? Sign up to donate fluid (below). Founded by Léa & Kevin (who JUST announced their raise co-led by NFX & us, with participation from Cocoa 🍫, Wilbe, and angels). See our launch event below with many more photos to come.

We’ve touched down at Daylesford Farm for the Future Fifty Forum, and that can only mean one thing… We’re announcing our next Future Fifty 2025 Cohort! 🚀 The second cohort of 2025 brings together some of the UK’s most exciting later-stage tech companies, driving innovation across industries - from AI and aerospace to SaaS and sensors. A few facts about the cohort: 🚀 Collectively, these companies have raised a total of £1.4B 🚀 The total headcount across companies is over 2000 🚀 Includes our first-ever Libra cohort graduate! We're proud to support the next generation of UK tech unicorns. 🦄 Introducing our next  Future Fifty 2025 Cohort: 🧬 BioOrbit – Pharma tech making cancer treatment more accessible ⚡ Cambridge GaN Devices Ltd – Semiconductor innovation for power electronics 🚗 Carmoola – Flexible car finance platform 🏗️ Converge – AI to decarbonise and optimise concrete 🛡️ DeepCytes Cyber Labs (UK) – AI forensics and anti-espionage technology ⚖️ Definely – AI legal tool for contract drafting and review 🧠 ELIXR– Smart regeneration for towns & places, driven by data & tech 📓 Granola – AI notepad designed for back-to-back meetings 💊 Greywolf Therapeutics – Biotech for immunotherapy 🚚 HIVED – Sustainable parcel delivery network 💡 Metaview – AI platform for recruitment interviews and insights ☀️ Naked Energy Ltd– Solar heat & power technology for commercial buildings 🌱 Nodes & Links – AI for construction project management 🍽️ Nory – AI-driven operations platform for restaurants 🍬 Get Nourish3d – 3D-printed personalised nutrition with AI 🌐 proSapient – Tech-enabled expert network platform ⚡ Raycast – AI productivity tool for streamlined workflows 📱 Raylo | B Corp – Subscription platform for electronic devices 🛒 Shop Circle – AI-powered platform that acquires and scales B2B software 👩⚕️ Simple Online Healthcare – Digital health platform with clinical support 🔬 Skin Analytics – AI-driven skin cancer diagnostics ❤️ Ultromics– AI diagnostics for cardiovascular care 🤖 UnlikelyAI– Trust-focused deep tech AI research 🏠 Urban Jungle Insurance – AI-powered InsurTech combating fraud ✍️ Wordsmith AI – Legal AI tool for in-house teams Thank you to our programme partners as well as our partners for our Future Fifty Forum: HSBC Innovation Banking, Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, Emerald Technology, Evelyn Partners, S&W, Blacklane, Microsoft, EY and Clicks. For insights into this year's £1.4 billion total raised cohort, read our Future Fifty Report here: https://lnkd.in/eQPfrMqH #FutureFifty #ItTakesATechNation Carolyn Dawson | Johnny M. | Ellie Steel | Imogen Granger | Ailsa Taylor Mealings | Charlotte Harris

We are delighted to lead Hesta Health pre-seed round, investing in Dr Sujitha Selvarajah and Amanda Cupples vision to create a new benchmark in women's health, delivering exceptional care at every life-stage. Women's Health has been a key investment theme for Eka since our founding in 2020, as it is severely underserved with women spending c25% more of their lives in ill health than men. Here we dive into more detail on why we invested: 1️⃣ Team: Dr Sujitha Selvarajah and Amanda Cupples are two crazy ambitious, accomplished and mission driven founders with clarity on how to improve the healthcare system. 2️⃣ Market need: Eka's proprietary survey found 72% of women would like to have received further support postpartum. 3️⃣ Impact: The gap between men and women's ill health widens postpartum, intervening at this stage has a dis-proportionately positive impact on closing the health gap.

💰 UK-based DITTO Daily has raised £1.35 million in pre-seed funding to expand its science-led supplement range targeting menstrual symptoms. The round was led by Eka Ventures, with participation from Jean-Baptiste WAUTIER and other investors. Founded in 2024 by nutrition scientist Alice van der Schoot, DITTO Daily launched its Cycle Supplement to address both mental and physical challenges of the menstrual cycle. 💊 💬 “For too long, there has been a huge disconnect between what science understands and the solutions available to those suffering from cycle-related symptoms,” said Alice van der Schoot, Founder of DITTO Daily. “Too many are given outdated advice or left to navigate trial and error with ineffective approaches.” Alice van der Schoot, Founder of DITTO Daily 👉 Full story: https://lnkd.in/gEmk9tEU #femtech #womenshealth #womenshealthinnovation #health #healthcare #healthcareinnovation #supplements #consumerhealth #vc #venturecapital #investment #investor #startup #uk #menstrualhealth #periodcare

Today we’re announcing the birth of Hesta Health, supported by an oversubscribed £2m pre-seed funding round. Women spend 25% more of their lives in ill-health than men. This gap limits potential, drives inequality, and reflects healthcare systems that haven’t been built for women. We - Amanda Cupples and Dr Sujitha Selvarajah - are changing that.  We have joined forces to co-found Hesta Health to create a new benchmark in women’s health, delivering exceptional care at every lifestage. As we advance towards this goal, we are committed to closing the women’s health gap.  Our vision is a world where health is a force for wellbeing, prosperity and growth, for all. Our first mission is to reimagine care for new mothers and birthing parents, delivering comprehensive, clinical care that helps them recover from birth, physically and emotionally, whilst building a foundation for a healthy life. We believe postnatal care should be designed around women’s real needs, not scattered across disjointed systems they’re expected to navigate alone. And we believe that the two years after childbirth represent a critical window to intervene not just to support immediate recovery from birth, but to deliver better lifelong health outcomes. We’ve raised £2m in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round from a committed and passionate group of investors.  The round is led by Eka Ventures, with participation from Blue Lion, Ascension, Samos Investments and an incredible group of angel investors.  We’re honoured by their trust in us. We’ll use this capital to support our UK launch of comprehensive, tech-enabled, clinically-led postnatal care to deliver proactive, milestone-led support covering everything from physical recovery to perinatal mental health issues and emotional wellbeing. Want to get involved? Follow Hesta Health on LinkedIn, and head to our website to learn more if: 👶 you’re pregnant, or have had a baby in the last few years and you want to get early access to our services, participate in beta programmes or contribute to vital research shaping the future of care 🩺 you're a GP, midwife, psychologist, physio or other healthcare professional dedicated to caring for women and birthing parents during or after pregnancy and you’d like to explore how to define and build the next generation of women’s healthcare 💻 you're an exceptional product designer or a full stack software engineer and you want to work with us 👂 you just want to keep in touch - receive regular updates on our launch and more. Postnatal care has been overlooked for too long. Women and birthing parents deserve more than to be told “just get on with it” - they deserve comprehensive, compassionate care that enables them to heal, thrive, and build the foundation for lifelong health. To all our investors, supporters and friends: thank you for believing in a future where women's health is prioritised.  The work begins now. 🚀 https://lnkd.in/ezJibCWt

Oxford Cancer Analytics (OXcan) announced today that we have raised US$11 million in Series A funding from global investors, including in-field institutional investors in disease detection and diagnostics. With the close of this round, Dr Heinrich Roder, expert in lung cancer proteomics liquid biopsy, was appointed Senior Vice President of Research and Development at OXcan. The funding round was led by We Venture Capital and Cross-Border Impact Ventures with participation from return investors Eka Ventures, and Civilization Ventures, and new investors DigitalDx Ventures, Macmillan Cancer Support (Innovation Impact Investment Portfolio), Aurelium Ventures, OKG Capital , and prominent angel investors. This investment brings OXcan’s total funding to date to US$16.7 million, positioning the company to develop and globally commercialize a new generation of minimally invasive liquid biopsy blood tests for early cancer detection, starting from lung cancer. Concurrent with the funding round, Gemma Sturt, Senior Investment Manager at We Venture Capital (cc Louise Warme), Werfen’s Corporate Venture Arm and Annie Theriault, Managing Partner at Cross-Border Impact Ventures (cc Cyriac M Alappat CPA,CA, Donna Parr) have joined as Directors. Michele Colucci, Esq., Founder & Partner at DigitalDx Ventures and Anthony Vallance-Owen, Senior Investment Manager at We Venture Capital have joined as Observers. OXcan welcomes these experienced leaders in diagnostics, global health, and commecialization joining the board with existing members Dr Peter Jianrui Liu, Jon Coker, Marcus East, Dr Andreas Halner, and Brad Wilson. A sincere thank you to OXcan’s team members and many others who continue to drive forward early cancer detection innovation on a daily basis: Dr Daniel Szulc, Dr Ella Mi, Dr Emma M., Dr. Harriet Ferguson, Dr Honglei Huang, Dr Junetha Syed, Luke Hankey, Mrunmayee D., Dr Nikola I. Gushterov, Priyanka Bhattarai, and Taryn Reid. OXcan is always looking for likeminded people to help bring early cancer detection tests to those who need it most. If you want to help, please get in touch at [email protected]! About Oxford Cancer Analytics Oxford Cancer Analytics is on a mission to drastically transform cancer early detection and management to impact millions of lives worldwide. OXcan's multidisciplinary team is developing a new generation of liquid biopsy blood tests using cutting-edge proteomics and explainable machine learning approaches that can detect the deadliest cancers early, when they can still be cured. This blood test can be conducted in an affordable, minimally invasive, and routine manner with superior accuracy and localization capacity in large populations. OXcan has applied their biomarker discovery and validation platform starting from lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide, and achieved ISO13485 certification status. For additional information, visit oxcan.org. https://lnkd.in/evXGzFKq

We reached the 100th edition of our newsletter! Today, we're publishing a lookbook of some of the UK’s top consumer-facing brands focussed on sustainability & health which are growing revenues very rapidly from a good base of scale. These have all been incorporated post 2016 and are true movers and shakers within our thesis areas. Many of these companies are in the Eka Ventures portfolio, but we also wanted to highlight others including Healf, Skin + Me, and Wild. The full list (in alphabetical order) ⬇️ 1.🚊 Byway: the world's first 100% flight free travel platform (Cat Jones) 2. 🧘♀️ Healf: curating the world's best wellbeing brands (Max Clarke, Lestat McCree) 3. 👟 hylo athletics: using material science to unlock sustainable sportswear (Michael Doughty, Jacob Green) 4. 💊 Jude: clinically-tested botanicals for a health bladder (Peony Li) 5. 💜 Paired: stay in love with Paired using daily conversation starters (Kevin Shanahan, Diego López) 6. 🏃♂️ Runna: take your running to the next level (Dom Maskell, Ben Parker) 7. 🧴Skin + Me: finding effective skincare should be simple (Horatio Cary, James Mishreki) 8. 🏠 Urban Jungle Insurance: simple, clean, & fair insurance (Jimmy Williams, Greg Smyth) 9. 🍩 Believe in Science Ltd.: unbelievable donuts (Anthony Fletcher) 10. 🧼 Wild: naturally effective personal care, without the rubbish (Freddy Ward, Charlie Bowes-Lyon). We know that we've missed a lot of incredible consumer companies (👀 ZOE, PerfectTed, SURREAL, DIRTEA, SURI 👀)... who else should we include in our list? Tell us in the comments or message some of the Eka team (Jon Coker, Camilla Dolan, Hamish Law, Alicia Walker, Anna Westall). ⬇️ Comment & tag below ⬇️

Delighted to see a number of the Women Founders Eka Ventures has invested into being featured in the Founders Forum Group 100-Women to Watch Report Shout out to 🎉 Cat Jones CEO & Founder of Byway - Flight free travel 🚂 🚅 🚉 Peony Li CEO & Founder of Jude - Raising the standard for bladder health 👩⚕️ Murvah Iqbal 📦 📦 Co-CEO & Founder of HIVED - Fully electric delivery 🚚 Dr Sonia Szamocki CEO & Founder of 32Co - Up-skill healthcare professionals 🦷 Read report here: https://lnkd.in/edG64Gw4 Eka Team Office drinks 🍹