“We founded Evvy because the female body shouldn’t be a medical mystery.”
That’s what Evvy chief executive officer and co-founder Priyanka Jain said to me this week about her company. The women’s health startup, which launched in 2021, bills itself on its website as helping women “know what’s up down there.” At the heart of Evvy’s mission is its state-of-the-art, at-home vaginal microbiome test designed to help women understand their vagina’s health with a single swab. Evvy boasts its test as the “first and only” CLIA-certified, mNGS product on the market.
A single test costs $129. An Evvy subscription lowers the price to $99 and includes perks such as a one-on-one coaching call and custom plans. Subscribers get access to four tests per year, shipped to them every three months. This allows for tracking one’s vaginal health over time.
Jain explained she and co-founders Laine Bruzek and Pita Navarro sought to unlock “precision women’s healthcare through biomarker discovery” in large part because women’s healthcare is underserved by the medical community. Women, Jain told me, weren’t required for clinical research in the United States until as recently as 1993. What’s more, women are diagnosed four years later on average, for some 770 diseases, compared to men. Jain added vaginal discomfort is one of the leading reasons women seek healthcare; conditions include bacterial vaginosis, yeast infections, recurrent urinary tract infections, and more. According to Jain, almost all, or 90%, of these cases can be attributed to what she described to me as “imbalances in the vaginal microbiome.”
“Despite vaginal infections being the most common infection in women after the common cold, the standard of care is far from where it should be. Women with vaginitis are more likely to be misdiagnosed than correctly diagnosed at the doctor’s office and are more likely to recur their infection in 6 months later than to get better,” Jain said. “What’s more, the latest research has uncovered groundbreaking links between the vaginal microbiome and critical female health outcomes like infertility, STIs, preterm birth, gynecologic cancers, and more. Yet the vaginal microbiome remains under-researched, and current standards for vaginal health testing and treatment are underpinned by overly simplistic methods like microscopy and brute-force antibiotics.”
Asked how technology plays a role in Evvy’s work, Jain reiterated the relative dearth of quality women’s healthcare. Despite the rise of artificial intelligence in delivering what she termed “precision medicine,” she told me women are being left behind. Evvy exists to account for those forgotten, with Jain saying she and her other co-founders decided the avenue by which to make a difference would be “unlocking precision medicine for women by discovering and leveraging overlooked biomarkers, starting with the vaginal microbiome.” The result is a clinically-validated platform, powered by AI, that Jain said is the “first to combine state-of-the-art vaginal microbiome testing, precision care, and coaching.” To date, Evvy has not only helped tens of thousands of women access vaginal healthcare, the company also has “built the largest comprehensive dataset on the vaginal microbiome,” Jain said.
Jain said plainly Evvy’s product is “for any with a vagina,” adding it’s also useful to those who experience vaginal symptoms and menopause, or whom are interested in optimizing their fertility and pregnancy.
From a disability perspective, Evvy is interesting for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, many disabled people do indeed have vaginas and thus would benefit from the kind of care Evvy provides. It seems exceedingly obvious to point that out, but the reality is it’s plausible for a disabled woman to feel even more disenfranchised when it comes to accessible, timely healthcare. The digital-first nature of Evvy means someone can order these tests online and have it shipped to their doorstep. As with shopping on Amazon or anywhere else on the internet, the fact Evvy offers the direct-to-customers tests means a disabled person needn’t worry about any medical and/or logistical concerns getting to and from a gynecologist’s office. Add in the phone call, and the at-home nature of Evvy becomes an assistive technology unto itself. These are not trivial considerations; they reflect how accessibility (and technology) touches every facet of everyday life for a disabled person.
My conversation with Jain coincided with Evvy’s announcement today that the company has secured $14 million in Series A funding, led by Left Lane Capital. Other partners in the funding round included General Catalyst, Labcorp Venture Fund, RH Capital, Ingeborg Investments, G9 Ventures, Virtue, and Amboy Street Ventures.
“Evvy’s groundbreaking platform is changing the way we understand and care for the female body,” said Left Lane Capital vice president Laura Sillman in a statement for the press release. “We made the strategic decision to invest in Evvy because we deeply believe in their mission and team, and we are confident that their innovative approach will finally unlock a future of women’s healthcare grounded in data. Evvy has already made great strides in closing the gender health gap and we’re excited to be a part of the next phase of their growth journey.”
Feedback-wise, Jain said it’s been positive. The Evvy team hears “regularly” from customers who are effusive in their praise for the company’s product, often saying it saved their life. Jain also said Evvy is popular on social media, telling me women share TikTok videos about yeast infections and more that go viral and garner millions of views.
People are thankful for Evvy giving them the ability to decode the mysteries of their vaginal health after years of uncertainty and general dismissal from the broader healthcare industrial complex. “Given that vaginal health challenges can affect mental health, sexual wellness, interpersonal relationships, reproductive health, and much more, the impact of our community can’t be understated,” Jain said.
She continued: “We’ve built a community of hundreds of thousands of people who now understand their vaginal microbiome and how interventions can affect it—and in doing so have helped dispel stigmas and shame around things like vaginal discharge and smell.”
Jain also noted Evvy announced a strategic partnership last January with New York City mayor Eric Adams called the “New York City Women’s Health Agenda.” The new initiative, she said, is designed to “[dismantle] decades of systemic inequity that have negatively impacted the health of women across the five boroughs [of New York City].”
Looking towards the future, Jain told me the aforementioned venture capital funds will prove instrumental in helping Evvy “scale access to our innovative testing & care platform, leverage AI to discover novel molecular signatures for women’s health diagnostics, and validate improved outcomes in fertility, pregnancy, and beyond.”
“Our aim is to bring the best technology to women’s health to radically reinvent how we understand and treat the female body as a whole, and inspire everyone—doctors, educators, lawmakers, researchers, and patients—to close the gender health gap for good,” Jain said.
Jain and Evvy want to keep raising awareness of female health.
“Imagine a world where female health is finally understood: where risks are detected early and precisely, conditions are defined with specificity and nuance, and diseases are treated with personalization and care,” she said of the future. “That’s the world that Evvy is pioneering.”
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