From developing revolutionary DNA synthesis technologies to taking a COVID-19 test at home, health and medicine have made strides in recent years. However, there are still some areas where cutting edge tech is still catching up and female fertility was one of them. Amsterdam-based female co-founded startup Grip Fertility has come up with an innovative solution that enables home fertility tests for women. The company aims to enable women to better plan their future with data about their body/fertility.
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Easy testing at home for better future planning
The home testing kit by Grip Fertility works in the exact same way as a standard hormone blood test that a fertility doctor would prescribe. One simply needs to fill their profile at the company’s website here to inform them about the hormones that can be tested for. One will receive the kit in 3 to 5 business days after placing their order.
Testing at home is a breeze as one simply needs to collect about 0.5ml (5-10 drops) of their blood and send it to the company’s partner lab, which is ISO15189 certified. Drs. Noor Teulings is one of the co-founders of Grip Fertility who will review your report after it is generated, which takes about 5 days. Users will get the report and a complimentary live consultation with Drs. Teulings.
Launching a business during corona times
It is not easy to start any kind of business, especially during the coronavirus. In an exclusive interview with Silicon Canals, Ling Lin, the co-founder and CPO of Grip Fertility says that their offering was needed more in lockdown. The company commenced its beta testing phase with 30 customers before the lockdown happened, with the plan to commercially launch in early April.
“When lockdown happened, we considered delaying our launch. However, after talking to our beta and other potential customers – we found our product was even more needed during the lockdown. Most GPs and specialists had to shut down since they were considered not Corona related or non-essential (and yes preventive female health and monitoring were considered nonessential).” Says Lin.
Grip Fertility’s tests can be easily done at home and they offer a free consultation with Drs. Noor Teulings, the co-founder who is also a medical doctor. Realising this, the company decided that there’s no reason to delay the launch, in fact, they offer a new channel of access to women
All competition is good competition
Most businesses tend to try and outdo their competition but as per Lin, the competition in the femtech space is all for the best. “We all want to improve the femtech space and give women information about their body,” says Lin. Even though Grip Fertility currently faces no competition in the Netherlands, there’s Modern Fertility in the US and Adia Health in the UK.
Grip Fertility is enabling a better way for women to keep checking in on their fertility. Lin says, “Culturally, Americans are used to doing annual checks and seeing a gynaecologist at least once a year. In the Netherlands, annual health checks are not as common as the US. Additionally, women rarely see a gynaecologist unless there’s a problem – and when that happens, she needs a referral from the GP before she can visit the Gynecologist.”
Lin needed to find out about her health and realised it was way harder to get data on her fertility. Grip Fertility started with the idea of making it easier for women to get reliable data about their body.
Business model and external funding
Grip Fertility has two parts to its business, one being the Grip test, which is directly for consumers. Second is a community where the company shares the latest scientific knowledge on women health/fertility. As for funding, the company managed to raise a pre-seed round on convertible notes through friends and family alongside angel investors, who previously invested in companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Entrepreneur First, and Songkick, etc.
Co-founded by Anne Marie Droste, Ling Lin, and Dr.s Noor Teulings, Grip is currently on the lookout for a Founding Team Intern. You can click here to check out the position and apply.
This article is produced in collaboration with StartupAmsterdam. Read more about our partnering opportunities.