Founded by Alice Williams, Ovira is changing the way women experience their period by using pulse therapy. The technology stimulates the nerves and stops period pain instantly. No pills, no side effects, and no interruptions to your day.
Over the past six months, Ovira has seen astonishing growth and it’s pretty crazy how they got started. The idea for this life-changing product sparked from a pain point that founder Alice could really empathise with. Alice struggled through years of endometriosis and was over trialing every pill and solution on the market, alongside approximately 200 million women worldwide, according to the Endometriosis Australia Organisation.
When the idea formed, it truly was a breakthrough for Alice as she knew that she could potentially help this amount of women worldwide. After studying health science at Deakin University she leveraged her tight network and pre-existing technology, which allowed her to go to market pretty fast. Alice validated her idea by hosting focus groups and interviews with women who were suffering, so she was confident to scale it. Like most startup founders, Alice began to bootstrap the business by doing all the initial branding herself, for example; creating the initial logo and brand kit in Mircrosoft Word.
After the idea phase and MVP, Alice was ready to get things fast-tracked so she joined an accelerator program called ‘Smartmate‘ by Blackbird. Then, when it came to raising capital, Ovira opened a seed raise, which was closed in late February, securing $1.5 million in funding from Blackbird Ventures, for product development.
Over time and investment, the team began to grow and Ovira’s market expanded very rapidly. Ovira’s largest market now covers Australia and the U.S and manufacturing and storage is operating from China. Ovira is prospecting to expand into other markets like New Zealand and Canada soon, and with help from advisors like Dany Milham, the growth opportunity is large.
Ovira has a very specific marketing strategy that has allowed them to achieve such rapid growth in six months. Despite the fact that Ovira started with one product, they have managed to build a community of like-minded women who care about their brand with 14.4k followers on Instagram and 7.1k members in their private Facebook group. Ovira’s online community, that generates shareable content is mostly consumer generated, allowing for them to thrive in their agile team of four. When we spoke with Ovira’s Growth Marketer, Vicky Lee her journey into growth hacking was very similar to Alice’s. Vicky dropped out of University and jumped straight into the workforce, she said she “learns best by doing… with a fail, learn, fail, learn” approach.
The agile team, have recently moved into Fishburners and are absolutely loving it, Vicky says “ Fishburners reminded me of the importance of human connection, it’s been so nice having the team together”. The team appreciate that they can be surrounded by like-minded people who they can empathise with and learn from.
Ovira are certainly the startup to watch as they continue to expand and deliver more products to nurture women worldwide over the coming months.
Written by Hannah Johnston, Digital Marketing, Fishburners.