Hesta Health raises £2M pre-seed to rebuild postnatal care
July 31, 2025
Hesta Health, a London-based women's health startup, has launched out of stealth with a £2 million pre-seed round led by Eka Ventures. Blue Lion Capital, Ascension Ventures, Samos Investments and angel investors also participated in the oversubscribed round.
The pitch is that postnatal care in the UK falls off a cliff six weeks after birth, just as the medical, physical and mental health needs of new mothers are still resolving. Co-founder Dr Sujitha Selvarajah, an NHS obstetrics and gynaecology doctor, argues that the system asks women to advocate harder for themselves at the exact point when most have least capacity to do so. The company cites McKinsey research suggesting women spend roughly 25 percent more of their lives in ill health than men, a gap McKinsey values at around $1 trillion in lost annual economic output.
The product is a digital-first platform aimed at the two years after birth. Users complete a clinically led health check that combines an at-home blood test and a detailed questionnaire, then receive a personalised care plan reviewed by a postnatal doctor and a multidisciplinary team. A service called AskHesta handles ongoing questions on day-to-day recovery, mental health and infant care, and patients can step up into Hesta Care for follow-on appointments with GPs, physiotherapists, dietitians, psychotherapists and lactation specialists. The model is digital where it can be and in-person where it has to be.
Hesta was founded in May 2025 by Selvarajah, who has held research roles at Oxford and UCL alongside her NHS work, and Amanda Cupples, previously Managing Director for Northern Europe and MEA at Airbnb and CCO and COO at Babylon Health. The company is regulated by the Care Quality Commission, which registered the service in January 2026, and is currently running an early access programme.
The pre-seed money is earmarked for UK market entry, including digital product development, regulatory compliance, and hiring across product, technology, clinical operations and research. Camilla Dolan, General Partner at Eka Ventures, framed women's health as a trillion-dollar opportunity, calling the combination of Selvarajah's clinical background and Cupples's operating experience a uniquely strong founding team for the category.
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