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Wellness is a lifestyle. It’s the active pursuit of becoming better physically, mentally and emotionally. Some would call it a constant state of intentional being.
Wellness has an impact on every aspect of your life. From the performance of your work to the quality of the relationships you possess. It’s also not just one thing, it’s a combination primarily of your sleep, health, nutrition, appearance and level of mindfulness.
Of interest to you, it’s on the radar for a lot of investors right now.
McKinsey gave the Wellness industry a global market value of $1.5 trillion, and many investors are tapping in. Lightspeed Venture partners have a portion of their $10 billion AUM invested in several early stage wellness companies. They are backers of popular wellness apps such as Calm and Real.
General Atlantic, American growth equity firm, has a sizable sum of their $53 billion AUM invested in the likes of Gympass and Fresha.
Gympass solely sells memberships to employers who then distribute them to their employees. In May 2021, they saw a record of 4 million check-ins across their network of over 50,000 global partners. Some partners recorded higher usage post-pandemic. Possibly a result of the increase in people being more health-conscious.
Close to home, we’ve seen companies like Heights achieve tremendous growth and success. Our investors have reaped the benefits of a 104.8% increase in Heights’ share price on our Secondary Marketplace.
As well as Thalamos, a subscription service for psychiatrists built to solve digital challenges facing mental health. In a 2018 focus group study by Thalamos, 85% of psychiatrists said they needed a better way to organise their paperwork. The higher the level of organisation, the more time there is to provide quality care to patients.
206 investors saw the need for this sort of technology to exist. This resulted in Thalamos beating their £100,010 target, raising £171,548 (165% overfunded). Investors have seen a 10.8% increase in share price.
🤔 Why is wellness buzzing right now? Why should you care?
There’s no denying that the pandemic has increased demand for improved health care. Consumers are taking matters into their own hands as a result of the controversial news from around the world. 65% of Europeans are now more likely to consider their health in day-to-day decision-making.
The concept of wellness is reaching a wider audience thanks to social media. Linkfluence dubbed it the “wellness culture”, where yoga poses, fruit bowls and face masks fill your timeline.
61% of wellness content is visual, which has a very calming effect on social media consumers. Even as someone’s first encounter with wellness, it’s enough to pique their interest in pursuing a greater degree of wellbeing in their lives.
Last but not least, Millennials and Gen Z are a vocal bunch. With millennials making up the majority of the world population, they have a lot of power when it comes to who makes the rules. Both generations are open about their expectations from their workplace, their relationships and themselves. Wellness is a priority to them, less seen in previous generations.
As a result, startups are coming up with solutions to prioritise wellbeing at the place we spend the most time at. More on this later!
There are a number of reasons contributing to the 5-10% annual growth in the sector. There’s also a share for everyone whether you’re interested in health, workplace or tech.
💊 These two startups are working to improving your health, forever.
Meet Sunna van Kampen, the founder of Tonic Health. Sunna has been around natural remedies from a young age. However, his passion lies with business. He would charge his parents 2 pence to pass through their staircase. An entrepreneur was born.
Sunna pursued a corporate finance career, but would notice he’d often get sick during the winter season. Why do we always catch a cold at the busiest period of our lives? Is life really forcing us to slow down? Or are our bodies being deprived from the nutrients they need? These are questions that Sunna had to meditate on.
He soon realised that the on-the-shelf solutions were only designed for symptomatic relief. They didn’t tackle recovery or prevention. Honing in on his early entrepreneurial spirit, he decided to create Tonic Health. Tonic Health is the strongest, most natural, vitamin drink with high doses of Vitamin C and D, Zinc, and plant extracts.
When they decided to crowdfund with Seedrs, it was a no brainer from their impressive record of success so far. Between August and October 2021, with only £9,000 on media spend, they generated £94,656 in revenue. They also saw an average 49% monthly D2C growth. Tonic Health are constantly outselling leading competitors.
With 2,000 distribution points, including Sainsbury’s and Boots, Tonic Health are taking their business to the next level. Unsurprisingly, they’ve exceeded their £200,000 investment target with 179 investors on board. But it’s not too late to join them.
Visit the pitch here, and help Tonic Health scale further into international markets.
Ashley Heeley founded Hippie Turtle Herbal Co after a sudden diagnosis of Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS). Producing the best natural remedies, their mission is to effectively improve the quality of everyone’s life in a long-lasting way.
A lot of people suffer from chronic pain, injuries, stress and anxiety. 15.5 million Brits (34% of the population) suffer with chronic pain. Of those, 5.5 million struggle to take part in day-to-day activities. Yet, there’s still a lack of solutions to manage these issues. Ashley knew that more could be done.
“Hemp and CBD played a huge part in my recovery process and I began to experiment with different ways to use CBD, such as making bath bombs and muscle rubs. Not only did the resulting products help me physically, but the learning process itself offered great mental stimulation too, helping to distract from the pain.
After a short while, it became clear that these products were gathering a lot of interest and could help so many other people. And that was the start of Hippie Turtle Herbal Co®.”
Hippie Turtle Herbal Co just launched on Seedrs! Head to their page to be one of the first investors.
👨💻 Bridging wellness and tech
Entrepreneurs are combining wellness and tech to put innovative solutions in our pockets. So much so that the Institutional Investor called it the “Venture Capital’s New Favourite Industry”.
Tech-focused health and wellness investment reached a record high of $7.3 billion in VC across 449 deals. By 2025, the wellness tech market size could reach $400 billion. To put this in perspective, it was valued at $50 billion in 2019.
We are no stranger when it comes to wellness tech startups. Do you remember Urban? If you were wondering, they’re still going strong.
Jack Tang founded the company originally as an on-demand massage service. They eventually pivoted to cover more wellness treatments. The USP? Whatever it is, it’s done in the comfort of your own home.
Ultimately, Urban caters to the busy individual who lacks the luxury of time, but they still want to invest in their overall wellbeing. Urban was born in London but now spans over Manchester, Birmingham and Paris. The platform is home to 4,500 freelance practitioners. Since reopening after the UK lockdowns, they’ve seen sharp growth of 20,000 hours of treatment delivered a month.
When they came to raise with us for the second time, their objectives were clear:
- Improve their technology
- Take advantage of people being at home
- Reduce market competition.
It’s safe to say that they certainly achieved that, being one of our biggest success stories. Urban set out to raise £2 million. They walked away with £5,977,517 from 901 investors, 293% overfunded. Learn about their journey here.
💼 Wellness in the workplace
Mental health disorders are on the rise and it’ll soon be costing the global economy $16 trillion. What are the repercussions for employers? Higher sickness rates, increased employee turnover and lack of motivation results in lost productivity. The lower the internal productivity, the lower a business’ revenue.
In the UK, 70 million workdays are lost each year due to poor mental health. This costs the British economy £70-80 billion. Less than half of British employees feel like they can speak to their line manager when suffering from stress.
It’s clear that there is a wide divide between the efforts companies are making, and what their staff think. In the Business of Health 2020 report, 70% of employers believed they provide good access to health and wellness benefits, whilst only 23% of employees agree.
The statistics aren’t great but things are getting better thanks to the companies prioritising wellness in the workplace.
A leader in the industry, LifeWorks is on a mission to keep employees healthy and at work. Their aim is to prevent turnover, absenteeism and loss of productivity through their own personalised solutions.
For example, they provide services to employers such as EFAP (Employee & Family Assistance Program) and ICBT (Internet-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). Whether it’s helping employees achieve their goals, reducing absenteeism by 47% or providing 24/7 critical incident support, they’re helping 24,000 companies globally put their staff first.
Following in their footsteps, but in the niche field of finance is Elva. Formerly known as Float and MyWagez.com, Elva is a financial wellness provider improving employee health through reduced financial stress.
Money worries are one of the biggest causes of stress, anxiety and unhealthy comparison. In employment, it can affect your physical and social wellbeing leading to poor job performance.
Elva provides solutions which companies can adopt to ensure the financial wellbeing of their employees, in return building a productive company. Studies show that employees who perform better bring a 6x return on wellness investments.
Elva has a cool Salary Advance feature. This allows employees to take a portion of their salary in advance, when they need it, at a fixed fee. Their credit union saving and loans assistance helps employees consolidate outstanding debt and start working towards a brighter future. In addition to a benefits calculator, they also provide financial education, coaching and advice so employees can develop good consistent habits.
We’re proud to have worked with Elva in late 2020 when they were raising money to bring holistic wellness to finance through technology. At the time of fundraising, they already had 255,000 employees in the pipeline and averaged 35% month-on-month growth. Clients included multinational companies such as Suez Plz.
Understanding their vision, some with personal stories themselves, it’s no wonder they exceeded their fundraising goal of £512,500. 101 investors came together to help Elva raise just over £1.1 million. You can read more about it here.
Society overall is prioritising wellness now more than ever. This isn’t a fad. As life becomes more digital and we face new challenges as a world, wellness will only continue to grow.
You have a unique opportunity to invest now whilst the industry is still establishing itself. View active campaigns putting wellness at the forefront here.
