By Dr. Derick En’Wezoh and Courtney Buie Lipkin, Investors at Susa Ventures
Susa Ventures is excited to announce our recent investment in Oya Care, a disruptive virtual health clinic for women in Brazil. Oya Care is reimagining healthcare from a female perspective and has built an affordable platform that provides care for women’s reproductive and most reoccurring health needs. We led Oya Care’s $2M seed round alongside Brazilian seed fund Canary.
This investment is particularly special to Susa Ventures as it is aligned with our ongoing focus to support innovative care delivery models in women’s health and to further invest in Latin America. We are thrilled to welcome Stephanie Von Staa Toledo and the rest of the team at Oya Care to the Susa Family.
Stephanie Von Staa Toledo, Oya Care’s Founder & CEO
Since our inception, Susa has been investing in innovative healthcare platforms that increase access to and the quality of care. Having invested in care coordination companies like Viz.ai and HealthTensor, we deeply believe in the power of technology to democratize care.
Technology startups focused on the women’s health sector, better known as FemTechs, are growing at an unprecedented rate. The global FemTech market is expected to reach $50 billion by 2025. Already in the United States, companies such as Maven, Tia, and Kindbody are providing holistic care for fertility, pregnancy, and parenting. Other FemTech companies are reinventing how we approach pelvic and breast health, innovating in menstrual period tracking and products, and are accelerating the development of women-centric pharmaceutical therapies. We are excited about this trend and believe will continue to accelerate in the coming years.
Without easy access to care, women are not in control of their own health. This is still the case in markets like Brazil where women lack a trusted and immediate source of health information. This means women are either unattended or made to navigate a byzantine system of traditional consultations and specialist referrals. It was this realization, along with seeing the success of FemTech companies in the United States, that motivated Stephanie Von Staa Toledo to start Oya Care.
For Ste, improving women’s health in Brazil is personal. Ste was born in São Paulo, Brazil. As a baby, she moved with her family to the United States before returning back to Brazil at the age of five. Ste studied Business Administration at Fundação Getulio Vagas. She subsequently went on to earn an MBA at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and work at the preeminent management consulting firm McKinsey.
Today, Oya Care provides women with a 3-step fertility package at affordable prices. Their fertility package includes: (1) a home AMH test collected by an Oya nurse; (2) a telehealth visit with an Oya physician; and (3) a digital and actionable patient report. Oya Care’s fertility package is loved by its customers, affectionately known as Oyanas.
With Oya Care women can now understand their reproductive health quickly, and from the convenience and privacy of their home. Ste’s vision is to move beyond fertility and reproductive services to other verticals of unmet need for women. We see a multi-billion dollar opportunity to enable Brazilian women to take control of their health.
We are excited to partner with Ste and the rest of the team at Oya Care as they continue to build the next-gen women’s health platform in Brazil.
Our Investment in Oya Care was originally published in Susa Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.