[Hardware] How femtech startup Inne rebooted its hardware launch after COVID-19 chaos

[FazzNoth]

It's been a tough few years for Berlin-based femtech hardware startup Inne, which came out of stealth R&D in the fall of 2019, shortly before COVID-19 hit Europe. By January 2020, founder and CEO Eirini Rapti tells us she was busy making final inspections ahead of the launch of its debut product -- a connected device it calls a "minilab" for at-home, saliva-based hormone testing to support fertility and cycle tracking -- but then, in just a few weeks, the region was plunged into lockdown and everything changed.

 

Hardware startups are rarely smooth sailing at the best of times. But the coronavirus pandemic created a cascade of new challenges for Rapti and her team around supply chain and logistics -- upsetting their careful calculations on unit economics. The pandemic also called a halt to a major piece of research work the startup had lined up with a U.S. university to study its hormone-tracking method for a key contraceptive use case -- a product it had intended to prioritize but could not bring to market ahead of the study, which is required to gain regulatory approval.

 

In a matter of weeks, Inne was forced to freeze its big launch as it tried to figure out how best to move forward -- and, indeed, whether it should launch the product at all in such a challenging reconfigured environment.

"Due to COVID-19 we've had to really shift around our plans," says Rapti, talking to TechCrunch via video chat. "We had loads of unpredicted supply chain issues … There were so many [CENSORED]ups that came up with COVID-19! It's unbelievable what happened.

 

"I remember our last interview [in October 2019], I was super optimistic -- I'm still very optimistic -- sort of really looking forward to get all of our tech out to the world. We were setting up our production line when I spoke to you. We had John Hopkins [research university] agreeing to our contraceptive study. Like, the world was my oyster … And then I came back from a last inspection of the goods coming off the production line in January 2020 and we were hearing about what was happening in China but we were not really conscious of it and then we were so busy with pre-sales and whatever.

"And then of course a month later we didn't know if we were going to get raw materials from China. We didn't know if the factories that were working within Europe were going to even be able to have people in the factory. "

 

The start of the planned contraception study also kept being postponed, as the U.S. research institution which had agreed to conduct it, pre-pandemic, understandably prioritized work related to COVID-19 itself.

The upshot for Inne was a shock freeze on its best laid plans -- plans Rapti had been working toward since 2017 when she founded the business and kicked off R&D to get the at-home hormone testing product to market.

 

"2020 for me started on this big high -- we had our final products, we got our approval [to sell the device in Europe], we are launching pre-sales. I think we had 200 people buy the product and then we kind of had to stop because we didn't know if we were even able to deliver these 200 … This is how bad it was," she adds.

As well as having shelled out to set up a production line it suddenly had to suspend, Inne had also doubled the size of its team to prepare for scaling. But suddenly the message from the investment world was 'slow everything down,' recounts Rapti. "So I was like why didn't you tell me two months ago?! … My whole strategy came crumbling down."

 

The supply chain and logistics disruption -- some of which has lingered even while pandemic lockdowns have eased -- also forced Inne to concentrate most of its effort on the German market in Europe -- "because we wanted to contain, as much as possible, the logistical nightmare," as she puts it.

"Electronic chip shortages of course are affecting everyone … but it's also as simple as backlog on logistics," she explains, discussing how COVID-19 has dialled up difficulties for the fledgling hardware business. "Your shipments take longer or your air freight is much more expensive and all of a sudden your price per unit becomes really high -- and for a small company like us, for a startup, if you cannot demonstrate your unit economics and your growth what can you demonstrate? And quite frankly I was sitting there for a few months -- and I think it was the first time I froze in my career where I felt I have no idea what I will be able to show in the next six months!"

By summer 2020, Rapti was facing a big decision over how to move forward while the business was still mired in uncertainties around supply chain resilience and with no new date on when it would be able to launch contraception as it still hadn't found a replacement partner to do the study.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/femtech-startup-inne-rebooted-hardware-103913702.html