Healthtech startup Elvie, which develops girls’s well being merchandise together with a breast pump and pelvic flooring coach, has been acquired by a US rival.
Since launching in 2013, the startup had picked up greater than $130m in VC funding from backers together with BlackRock, Octopus Ventures and the Enterprise Progress Fund.
On Friday, the Monetary Instances reported California-based Willow, which had taken authorized motion in opposition to the corporate earlier than it fell into administration, had acquired Elvie.
In an announcement shared with Sifted, Willow CEO Sarah O’Leary stated: “Whereas the transaction took form otherwise than we’d initially deliberate collectively, Willow and Elvie’s dedication to becoming a member of forces permits us to speed up innovation, proceed driving the dialog in girls’s well being, and create a robust enterprise platform.”
She added: “There are only a few gamers within the Femtech house with significant scale, and we look ahead to delivering worth for girls and mothers by our mixed product portfolio and innovation that strikes the needle in girls’s healthcare.”
Administration consultancy agency FTI Consulting has reportedly been charged with overseeing the phrases of the acquisition. One investor instructed the FT the deal was emblematic of the difficulties concerned in scaling up a UK tech firm.
“With out severe and incentivised US backers you can’t win of their market. If Elvie was a USA enterprise it could have had protections [over its intellectual property], progress capital and be a decacorn [valued at more than $10bn],” they instructed the paper.
London-based Elvie was as soon as Europe’s best-funded femtech startup, with interval app Flo being the next-best-funded firm within the sector, having bagged $76.4m, in line with information from Dealroom.
