Women’s hormone health and fertility company Oova has raised $10.3 million in series A funding.
The series A round was led by Biomilq backer Spero Ventures, with participation from the firms US Fertility, Virgin Group, Jefferson Health and Connecticut Innovations as well as individuals Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, and Hannah Bronfman, a beauty and wellness investor open about her fertility struggles who’s backed Ceremonia, Live Tinted, Golde, Topicals, Wellory and Sienna Naturals.
Oova launched The Oova Kit in 2021, an at-home fertility tracking test that measures two hormones, luteinizing hormone (LH) and progesterone through urine to help women determine fertile days and ovulation. Users can scan a QR code on the test to instantly upload results. If they patronize one of Oova’s partner clinics, their doctors can access hormone data in real time via a HIPAA-compliant dashboard.
Since its debut, The Oova Kit has monitored over 10,000 cycles through Oova’s platform. The monitoring allows the company’s model to become a more precise health tool for women trying to conceive, navigating a fertility treatment, managing a reproductive health condition or better syncing their lives with their cycles. Oova is on track to double its revenue this year.
Fertility startups are becoming a big draw for investors. According to financial data resource PitchBook, $854.5 million was invested in them last year. The year before, they received $345 million in investment. Along with Oova, Carrot Fertility, Sunfish, Caraway, Kindbody and Hannah Life Technologies are among the fertility startups that have secured funding.
Oova founder and geneticist Amy Divaraniya had no intention of ever becoming an entrepreneur, something she shares with many women who’ve created companies after being failed—or at least profoundly let down—by the American healthcare system.
“I was actually at the end of my PhD and my husband, and I decided to start trying to have a baby,” says Divaraniya. “I’ve always had an irregular cycle, so we expected the journey to not happen the first time we tried, but nothing could have prepared us for the heartbreaking 18 month journey we were on. It was so difficult because I was using every tool that was available to me outside of going into a clinic. I realized that I wasn’t any smarter [at the end] than I was on day one.”
The sting was especially acute given Divaraniya’s extensive training in collecting and interpreting data. Though she was closely tracking her menstrual cycle, neither she nor her doctors could detect any trends. “Nothing was making sense,” she says. It was out of that frustration that the idea for Oova was born. (Divaraniya gave birth to a healthy son in 2018.)
It’s Divaraniya’s hope that Oova’s data enlighten not only the company’s users, but medical professionals, too. “Our data set is so unique because we have daily hormone levels for right now two critical hormones,” she says. “We also have symptom data as well as any treatments that are overlaid on top of it. That’s an incredibly powerful data set to start redefining terms like ‘geriatric pregnancy.’ We can make the case that advanced maternal age is not starting at 35. It’s actually later—and it’s revolutionary for this space.”
Oova is introducing a new membership model designed to provide ongoing support. Previously, Oova’s starter kit was $159 and refill kits were $99. Now, for $99, customers get 15 tests and one-on-one consultations with Oova’s hormone experts, virtual coffee chats with the company’s team, monthly webinars with its provider network and more. The membership fee can be paid for through flexible spending accounts (FSA) and health savings accounts (HSA).
Oova is deploying its series A funding to grow its workforce. It won’t be deploying it for an ingestible play—yet. If a user needs hormonal support from supplements, Oova will partner with a trusted company. Last year, it partnered with Thorne Research. Divaraniya explains, “We make recommendations to their supplements because they clinically validate each of their products, and that’s so core to our mission to make sure that anything we offer to our end user is of value and not going to cause harm.”
Divaraniya teases that Oova’s new membership program is “just the tip of the iceberg” of what she has planned for the company’s future. She says, “if you were to ask me what my end goal is for Oova, it’s to empower every woman with information so she can make the best choice and decision for her overall health. Wherever she is in her journey from first period to last and beyond, we want to make sure that we’re supporting her through every single one of those phases.”
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