Flora, a Kyoto-based femtech startup using AI to address the gender data gap in healthcare, has raised approximately ¥230 million (~$1.5 million) from Ritsumeikan Social Impact Fund, Nagase Future Fund (the CVC of chemical trading company Nagase & Co.), and PE&HR, alongside bank financing. Total funding to date has reached approximately ¥500 million (~$3.3 million).
Flora’s mission centers on a structural problem: the majority of medical research and clinical trials have been designed around male baselines, leaving a significant gap in data on women’s health. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry estimates that health issues specific to women result in approximately ¥3.4 trillion (~$22 billion) in annual labor productivity losses.
The company operates three products: Wellflow, an enterprise platform supporting female employee wellbeing across menstruation, fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause; Flora Expert, a data and AI-powered service that helps companies develop products and services informed by women’s health data; and Moonly, a consumer health app with approximately 200,000 users providing the underlying data foundation.
Flora was founded in 2020 Anna Kreshchenko while studying at Kyoto University. The company operates across Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, and Vietnam with a multinational team, and plans to use the funding to expand Wellflow’s capabilities, scale Flora Expert, accelerate Moonly’s growth in Asian markets, and hire engineers and data scientists.
