ForMen Success Story
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The pandemic era made everyone much more focused on their health and made everyone realize the importance of better health. To promote the same, many new and old platforms were emerging in the market all revolving around the health factor.
Few of them were targeted for mental health whereas few were targeted for specific conditions. One of the exceptions amongst the emerging platforms was the ForMen health startup highly directed toward the health and wellness of men.
ForMen - Company Highlights
Startup Name-ForMen
Headquarters-Hyderabad
Sector-Healthcare
Founders-Dr Lalitha Reddy
Founded-2015
Website-www.formen.health
ForMen - About
ForMen is a health and wellness-promoting brand for men. It is started and led by health professionals named Dr. Lalitha Reddy and Sreeram Reddy. The brand is dedicated to improving men's health with effective yet safe formulations.
The ForMen brand is highly acknowledged for its different range of products falling in the category of fertility, wellness, vitamins, minerals, lifestyle, etc. The brand works with the principle of providing premium quality products made with herbs and few minerals. All the product under their brand needs to pass out their quality check before stepping into the market.
Along with health and well products, ForMen is known to provide expert consultation service to its customers on their demand. ForMen is highly appreciated by its customers and is a proud brand with more than 45000 customers in its name.
ForMen - Industry
The Men’s Health & Wellness industry has gained prominence over the past few years. The Men’s wellness market has more than doubled in India in the last 3-4 years and is all set to grow at 16-17% annually. Most of the growth has happened in the grooming sector.
There is a significant growth in the supplements sector too in the coming 5 years. The increased willingness of the millennial generation to discuss non-critical health issues, combined with increased awareness and purchasing power will push the nutraceutical category to higher growth rates in the coming years.
Health & Wellness industry is one of the most stable & time-tested industries. With the present-day lifestyles, increased incidence of lifestyle diseases, newly evolving infections, increased burden of stress and obesity, etc the need for wellness, fitness, and health will only keep growing.
Awareness and interest of people in wellness will surely rise, and so will the adoption of good practices. The wellness industry is growing steadily but surely in the years to come. The focus of the company is on natural, safe and effective products as compared to chemicals.
ForMen aims to carve a niche in this category with its unique, natural, safe, and effective products that are formulated by doctors & pharma experts. They look at the entire country as their market. Children, adults, and the geriatric population, everyone from Day 0 to Day 100 will do better with supplements. A just-born baby needs Vit D supplementation so will a 100-old centenarian.
Bringing awareness is the key. The company not only had a look at the market research statistics etc but also knew from their Pan-India colleagues’ experience as well as from surveys and scientific articles, the extent of lifestyle disease burden in India and projected numbers in the next 10 years. This combined data was enough to convince ForMen about the huge need for genuine and effective supplements.
ForMen - Founders and Team
Dr. Lalitha Reddy and Sreeram Reddy are the founders of ForMen. They share almost the same vision and passion and are highly committed to quality.
Sreeram is a serial entrepreneur with vast and successful experience. He is a graduate of Purdue University, a very passionate and motivated person, who loves to build and nurture companies.
Dr. Lalitha Reddy is a medical specialist with over 25 years of experience and an alumnus of prestigious institutions like JIPMER, NIMS, Osmania General Hospital, and ISB. She is the former Vice President of Yashoda Group of Hospitals and presently is Vice President of Telemedicine Society of India – Telangana Chapter.
She is a very accomplished academic and scientific trailblazer with many awards and gold medals to her credit. She has many scientific research articles published in various national and international journals, delivered hundreds of lectures both in India and abroad, and is the author of two books.
Her vast experience along with a deep understanding of patient problems and psychology has led her to pave the path for ForMen & ForKids along with her colleagues.
ForMen - Startup Story
Having worked in hospitals for the last almost 30 years, they have seen that a huge proportion of sickness could be prevented if only people focused on preventive health and wellness.
In the early days of the pandemic, the company had first-hand experience of seeing peoples’ panic, different degrees of severity of illness based on age and immune status of a patient, and of course the sudden appearance of many ‘so-called Immune boosters’ in the market, mostly of poor quality and inadequate / overdosages.
The consequences of the un-informed, unaware & gullible people falling prey to various kinds of misinformation also did not escape their notice. So, a team of ForMen decided to embark on a journey of Preventive Health & Wellness, where they focused on supplementing nutrients to help improve the quality of life of people.
They initially focused on men because men are usually hesitant to approach a doctor or get professional advice for wellness issues. They do not prefer to discuss their performance, sleep, stress, weight, or other issues. Also, there has been a significant increase in men’s health issues over the last 1-2 decades.
Ex- Testosterone levels in men have reduced over the past 2 decades. Sperm counts in men have declined and infertility issues have also risen significantly in men. So has the incidence of stress and related mental health problems.
So ForMen, as doctors and experts felt that they should contribute significantly by creating a non-judgmental and discrete platform for men which offers genuine, effective & safe formulations in the right combinations and dosages.
They already were aware of the issues that they wanted to help solve, and also had the knowledge of formulations, so all they had to do was to partner with ingredient suppliers and manufacturers who had similar convictions towards quality & safety that we had.
They traveled extensively for factory visits and interacted with various manufacturers/suppliers before we chose the best, who aligned with our vision and mission. After that came the website development, branding, warehousing, last-mile delivery partners, etc. The entire journey was humongous learning for them.
ForMen - Mission and Vision
- ForMen is an online holistic online Health & Wellness platform for men. It provides wellness products & online doctor consultations.
- Vision – To be the most trusted health & wellness partner, offering high-quality wellness products that are a part of the wellness journey of all Indian men.
- Mission- To promote wellness, and preventive health and encourage discussions on health issues in men.
ForMen - Name, Tagline, and Logo
ForMen wanted the logo and Taglines to be very simple, direct & reflect what the brand offers. Since they wanted to start with Men’s wellness products – The name ForMen was quite literal and fortunately available.
Tagline ‘ For all things men’ simply followed the logo. Since their kid's products were exclusive for kids, the logo ForKids was also designed on similar lines. The tagline ‘ ForKids with smart moms ‘ was also very apt and simple.
ForMen - Business and Revenue Model
ForMen platforms offer products as well as consultations. The consultations are provided discreetly and free of charge. The products are also very reasonably priced, to bring them within the reach of most Indians.
Since they wanted the products to be affordable, their margins are significantly less as compared to similar brands. They have no commission models at resent and are not very keen to walk that path. The company is aiming to grow as a D2C brand, whose products sell based on their effectiveness, quality & safety.
ForMen - Challenges Faced
The challenges were there for the company but were not major. Since the core knowledge about wellness, remedies, and formulations was with them, the challenge only lay in associating with partners.
They did face challenges initially in associating with talent, that understood their core principles and also respected timelines. Due to the pandemic the website designing, raw material procurement & creative agencies were all not able to meet deadlines due to lockdowns, staff falling sick, etc. This was a very frustrating aspect, which drove them to optimize the operations better and strengthen in-house skill sets.
One of the important lessons they learned was to increase in-house talent and reduce dependency on external agencies. This is more cost-effective more flexible and amenable to quick decision-making and course changing, when necessary.
ForMen - Funding and Investors
Hustle Partners has been doing the initial funding and they may go for further funding in the coming 6 months when the company feels the need.
ForMen - Growth
ForMen launched the brand one fine day and started advertising on social media. Orders slowly started picking up, mostly by word of mouth and then they consciously kept their marketing budgets low and avoided the marketing blitzkrieg as they were very sure of the slow and steady pace of growth based on ‘word of mouth’. They believe that a satisfied consumer is the best form of marketing.
ForMen - Awards and Achievements
We have been featured in various magazines and have received the award ‘ Icon of the Year – Emerging Startup Company for the year 2021’ from the Times Group.
ForMen - Future Plans
The company is headquartered in Hyderabad. The suppliers & manufacturers are spread across the country. They have a central warehouse also located in Hyderabad. The company is doing well presently with 8-10% month-on-month growth. The company is also planning to expand its product portfolio, the future surely looks bright & shining. The GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) of ForMen is around Rs 600 on average at present. Feedback from consumers has been very positive & encouraging.
FAQs
Who is the founder of ForMen?
Dr. Lalitha Reddy and Sreeram Reddy are the founders of ForMen.
What is ForMen?
ForMen is a Health & Wellness brand that sells men's wellness products.
Has ForMen received any funding?
Hustle Partners has been providing the initial funding to ForMen.
What is the mission of ForMen?
The mission declared by ForMen is to promote wellness and preventive health along with encouraging discussions on men's health.