Sepalika, a healthcare content platform that offers research-based information on diet, lifestyle changes and supplements, has raised $750,000 (Rs 4.8 crore) in seed funding led by venture capital firm Accel Partners, a company statement said.
The firm, owned and operated by Moonjur Healthcare Pvt Ltd., will use the capital to further enhance its platform and strengthen its core proposition, the statement added.
Sepalika offers expert content for consumers and healthcare providers on the science of using supplements to boost immunity, attain better health and counter the side effects of drugs. It attempts to help people reduce or reverse chronic health conditions through guidance on lifestyle, dietary supplements and exercise.
Currently, the startup focuses on 11 chronic health conditions, including Type 2 diabetes, cardiac diseases, arthritis, mental health and depression, Alzheimer’s, and more.
The company was founded in 2016 by Sharda Agarwal and Mahesh Jayaraman. Agarwal previously worked with Coca-Cola, MarketGate Consulting and Motilal Oswal Financial Services and Future Lifestyle Fashions, while Jayaraman was a therapist and health advisor at Holistic Medicine and was the executive producer and head of content at INTV.
Several startups have come up in the recent past with various forms of Internet-based content offerings, targeting different segments of healthcare and wellness. These startups thrive on a content-first strategy to drive traffic onto their platforms which eventually helps them monetise through advertisement and sale of related health and wellness products and services.
Accel Partners India led a Series A investment of $4.4 million into another startup in the same segment, San Francisco- and Bangalore-based CureJoy, in June last year. CureJoy provides curated content on natural health and wellness, mostly in the preventive healthcare segment. It’s an online community that connects users with alternative medicine experts. The company has plans to launch personalised preventive healthcare services on a freemium model.
Bangalore-based Tasman Drive Software Pvt. Ltd venture, which operates health content portal Modasta, had raised $1.5 million in funding from a consortium of Mauritius-based high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) in July last year. The startup is a digital healthcare platform which provides multilingual medical and health-related information. It delivers content in the form of articles, videos and audios contributed by doctors and health experts.
In a recent interaction with VCCircle, Prashant Tandon, co-founder of Gurgaon-based Bright Lifecare Pvt. Ltd, which owns and operates online drug marketplace 1mg, said content is at the heart of the platform. “The majority of users come to the platform to read about medicines and their healthcare needs. On the content side, we receive around 3.5 million unique users and 12 million visits on the platform on a monthly basis, besides over 40 million page views,†he said. The company is planning an advertising model for the content side of its business besides working on making its content available in local Indian languages.