Things don’t always go as planned. In fact, they usually don’t.

Four years ago, femtech was both a rapidly-growing product category and a nationwide movement vocally championed by politicians, industry, and the media.

As the market began to grow, however, Japan’s incumbents took note and took action. The femtech social movement began to decouple from the products.

Today we talk with Amina Sugimoto about the future of femtech in Japan, the fragile nature of public promises in the face of corporate lobbying,  the likely impact of Prime Minister Takaichi on femtech, and how, despite aggressive lobbying by the incumbents, foreign femtech products are starting to enter the Japanese market.

There is a lot of important advice for anyone thinking of entering the Japanese market. It’s a great conversation, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

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Show Notes

  • What femTech means in Japan
  • Why its hard for men to invest in femtech — even when they want to
  • The transformation of femtech in Japan
  • Massive social and political support does not always translate to sales
  • How Japanese incumbents (still) stifle innovation
  • The core challenge in introducing new innovation in Japan
  • Prime Minister Takaichi’s likely impact on femtech in Japan
  • What other innovators should learn from femtech in Japan
  • WHat’s next for femtech in Japan

Links from the Founder

Transcript

Welcome to Disrupting Japan, Straight Talk from Japan’s most innovative founders and VCs.

I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me.

FemTech is, well, it’s just different in Japan.

FemTech in Japan is part market disruption, part social movement, part technological innovation, and part bureaucratic red tape. It’s something that everyone seems to get behind and support, but at the same time, that support is often slow, sometimes very slow, to translate into real action.

Well, today we sit down once again with Amina Sugimoto, founder of Fermata. And Amina is absolutely on the forefront of Japanese FemTech, women’s health, and the regulatory challenges that these products face in Japan.

Now, since we last had the chance to catch up with Amina three years ago, Fermata has had a change of fortunes and a change of strategy. Amina saw the growing social movement that powered FemTech in the early days start to decouple from the technology and take on a life of its own. And so she restructured Fermata, shrinking the team of 35 down to a small core team, and then refocusing and rebuilding.

Amina and I talk about why FemTech is having so much trouble crossing the chasm in Japan, what happens when Japanese incumbents decide they don’t want you in their market, and what’s really going to be at stake for women’s health in Japan over the next five years. But you know, Amina tells that story much better than I can. So, let’s get right to the interview.

Interview

Tim: So, we’re sitting here with Amina Sugimoto, the founder of Fermata, and one of the most active advocates for FemTech in Japan. So, thanks for sitting down with us and welcome back.

Amina: Thank you so much for having me again. I’m super excited for this.

Tim: So, we’ve got a lot to cover because so much has happened in I guess the last three years since you were on the show last. Just to kind of set the stage, like the word FemTech, it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So, what is FemTech?

Amina: So yeah, it does mean a lot of different things for different people. Initially, the term itself, people started using it around 2017, I think 18-ish. And it used to be a term that being used between investors and entrepreneurs. And at the time, a lot of sort of entrepreneurs working in sort of women’s health, they were having a hard time getting investment. So, they came up with a term to communicate with investors. And it literally sort of back then means the latest technology being applied on women’s health. So, it was very broad back then.

Tim: So originally, it was more of a financing, an investor-focused term, rather than a consumer-focused.

Amina: Yes. It really was.

Tim: Interesting.

Amina: Because back then, FemTech, edotech, I think all these terms started to sort of appear. Back then, and it still is, the majority of people working in finance are men. And it’s not like men’s fault, but it’s just difficult to communicate about the industry. Like this product is for menstruation, this product fertility, rather than saying that the FemTech sounded a bit easier for investors to sort of…

Tim: And I see what you mean. It’s not really discrimination exactly. It’s just investors tend to invest in what they know.

Amina: Or what they like, or what…

Tim: What they understand, I mean.

Amina: Exactly, exactly. So, there was a gender imbalance within the investor world. And so the term then was used to raise money.

Tim: But now it’s taken on a much, much broader use.

Amina: Yes. So interestingly, the term, so just sort of like around the same time as COVID. And I think that’s when the people start to get more interested about their own well-being or wellness. So, when Fermata started, it was in 2019, we started to use the term FemTech for consumers. It was during COVID, so we started to events on women’s health, and we started to use the term FemTech. And I think that sort of, it was the right timing. So, the term itself in Japan sort of spread really quickly. All these major magazines, newspapers started to pick up. But sadly, compared to what’s available in the US or Europe, there are not many tech products available in Japan yet. It’s just that the word simply became a lot more popular than the actual industry.

Tim: Is that because of regulations around medical technology? Is it just a Japanese consumer’s reluctance to try new things? Why do you think it’s?

Amina: Well, I think there’s a lot of things. And one of it is, of course, deregulation, which I can tell you more about later. Another thing would be that we have a pretty good health system. So, for people in Japan, compared to let’s say Americans, we are less interested in purchasing new products, because it’s easier and cheaper to go to a doctor. So, the mentality and sort of the industry itself is a lot different. However, there is a trick. The Japanese health system only covers clinical stuff, not prevention. And women’s health, most of it is related to prevention. So, we can only get covered by government if we have a breast cancer. But to prevent breast cancer, the only way to prevent it is to go to the checkup provided by the government. But there’s no intention. There’s no motivation to create something in between. Something that maybe we can track something at home.

Tim: So, last time we spoke, Fermata was experimenting with a lot of different business models and business directions. You were working with a lot of imported products. You had some pop-up stores, a couple of physical stores in e-commerce, and doing B2B consulting. And where is Fermata today?

Amina: I made a decision in February 2024 to shrink the size of the company to just myself. The market didn’t grow as fast as I predicted. So, February 2024 is when Fermata hosted our signature event called FemTechFest. We had over 6,000 people coming and we rented out the entire floor of Roppongi Hills. But then I realized soon enough, the market in Japan when it comes to women’s health and FemTech will hit the chasm. So, we managed to just capture those individuals who’s early innovators or those who’s interested in this kind of product. But we struggled enough to get into the mass market. So, the women’s health industry was hitting the chasm. And then I felt that when I hosted the event of over 6,000 people, we can host an event and bring in loads of people, but it doesn’t directly link that with our sales. And there’s something wrong is happening.

Tim: You know, it is. I mean, one of the things you told me last time we spoke really stuck with me about FemTech in Japan. And I think it goes directly to what you’re telling me now. Last time you mentioned that FemTech is more than a product category in Japan. It’s more of a social movement. It gives people kind of social permission to reexamine gender roles and to reexamine these conversations that were once considered settled about what’s appropriate for women to do and things like that. Can you talk a bit about if that’s still the case? And is it more that the interest was more on the social dynamic side than the product side?

Amina: I think it still is. So, we couldn’t get any of the signature tech products out in the market in the last five to six years because of the regulation, because of the market dynamics were spread. And then people had this high expectation and motivation. Yes, we can now freely talk about our own health issues, period, menopause, whatnot. And that did get to a certain level in Japan, there’s a TV shows and stuff. So, the environment around it has changed. But yet it has a lot stronger social movement connotation to it. And then not so much of the business industry side. So, when it comes to B2B business, we get a lot of inquiry from companies. Okay, we would like to do something about FemTech. And I’m like, what do you mean by something about FemTech? And for me, I’m like, whenever we speak with the Japanese, especially the big companies, it’s not their fault, but they’re just very general. And I guess those people who’s responsible leading this project, they’re often women. And they have something that they want to communicate. They have these passions and maybe the struggle that they have gone through over the time working in the company. But it’s usually like more of a social side and the product development.

Tim: Yeah, let’s tease out the difference between those two a little more, because I think that’s both fascinating and important. So, both Fermata and you personally have received a tremendous amount of attention and awards for your advocacy. You won, I think it was like Nikkei Woman of the Year a couple of years ago. The American Embassy awarded you a Woman of Courage award and a lot of other stuff, too. So, the advocacy seems to be making real changes. And so your B2B engagements, is that something where the companies are trying to make genuine changes, do you feel? Or is there still a sense of we want to do some kind of signaling that we support women?

Amina: I think the latter.

Tim: Really?

Amina: Yeah. And I was hoping that it won’t be that. But when I made the decision in 2024 to sort of shrink the business and then restart, I think we’re the very first one to sort of read the industry. And then the market is going to hit the chasm. I think that we’re the first ones who kind of figured that out. And then slowly, the big Japanese multinational companies were our clients who actually had women’s health and tech or FemTech departments, six months or a year after our decision, they started to close down their departments or businesses in this industry because it was a huge trend. The term became very popular, but the market sort of hit the chasm and not many people were trying to invest to go over the chasm to go to the mainstreaming market.

Tim: Let’s dig into the business side of things for a minute, and I want to get back to the social impact. So, there are genuine needs being addressed by these products, right? A lot of some of the things we discussed last time, granting women a certain amount of independence, not having to go to the clinic every time they wanted to know what’s going on inside their own bodies. I mean, these seem like genuine market needs, and your early sales indicated they were genuine market needs. So, what happened? Was it smaller than expected or not as big a problem as expected? What happened there? Why didn’t that develop as we thought it was going to?

Amina: It’s like a chicken and egg situation. One is like awareness thing, like the education, the mentality of people. For the past 75 years, just taking one example period, there hasn’t been other product apart from pads available in Japan. And then pads come with all this discomfort. But I think Japanese women sort of being taught that’s the only option you have to work around it. People are not used to trying out new things. Yeah. And another thing is just there’s literally just no infrastructure to make this product available in the market. There’s no, for example, sales channel available. Recently, we actually have a lot of clients from overseas and they’re making this product available in Japan as a medical device. And then the very first challenge that we face is where are we going to sell this?

Tim: What prevents e-commerce online sales as being the primary channel?

Amina: Well, that’s one. But based on experience, this product is so new to them that they come to online platform and they look at the product, but they won’t purchase it until they actually physically experience what it’s like. The touch point for consumer, let’s say in the U.S. for IoT product on a woman’s head, that’s around five or six. So, women want to go to a store and sort of touch it and then see what it’s like a couple times. And then they go to online store for a couple of times. So, in total, about six to about 10 times the touch point is needed to purchase it. So, usually I think that journey is that people will go and physically experience it on the store and then they buy it online. They won’t buy at the store.

Tim: Another factor you mentioned a bit earlier was Japan’s national health care system and that Japanese citizens have pretty good access to health care in general, whereas in the U.S. it’s a different situation. And that’s actually a significant driver of innovation for delivering lower cost health options and things. So, has the uptake of FemTech products been similar in Japan as developed nations with really strong national health care systems?

Amina: To be honest, I don’t really have an answer to that because we don’t yet have tech product available in the market. And at the end of this month, we are going to release the product called Kegg from the U.S. It’s a little egg looking device that we insert inside a vagina and can actually track your fertile window. I think that will be one of the very first tech device available and a medical device as well. So, that took us about almost five years to register the product, a medical device, which…

Tim: That’s a pretty hard timeline for any startup. Yeah.

Amina: Yeah, for sure.

Tim: I mean, you’ve been very active in advocating for legal changes. You were running learning sessions with LDP politicians and media. And you actually managed to get some regulations changed around this, didn’t you?

Amina: So, one of the things that I’m good at is looking at the pharmaceutical fair laws and regulations. So, anything that is related to cosmetics, medical devices, the product needs to be regulated. But it’s interesting when it comes to women’s health, it’s not just Japan, globally as well. The need for this different type of product for women’s health was sort of not being neglected but not known for a long time. So, if you look at the regulation itself, there’s no clear path for this product to get regulated. So, in the past five years, I managed to create four different roadmaps or categories for products to get regulated. For example, one for incontinence. There was no category available in Japan on the medical device that we can say, if we train our pelvic muscle, we can prevent incontinence. There were many pelvic muscle training devices, but because there was no category, we couldn’t register this product as a medical device. Now there are a few products that they can actually claim that it’s for incontinence. So, I started identifying this gap and then worked with the Ministry of Health to create a new category. But, Tim, another interesting thing is, one of the things I’ve been working for the past almost 10 years, no, 7 years now, is PAT and period underwear. And the Ministry of Health, and I think I’m going to be quite honest here about this, they have been avoiding to make period underwear available in Japan as a period product. Currently, we can only say it’s a border-absorbent underwear.

Tim: So, period products have a special license?

Amina: Yes.

Tim: Really?

Amina: Yeah, well, it’s for tampon, yes, it’s a class one. But for PAT, which is something that we put on top of an underwear, right, and it doesn’t even go inside the body, it’s been classified under something called quasi-drug. And to register a product as a quasi-drug in Japan is ridiculously expensive and takes a long time. And you know why? And I can be quite honest about this as well.

Tim: Oh, please, please.

Amina: Because the industry association, do you know approximately the market size of period pads in Japan?

Tim: I have no idea.

Amina: Approximately between 400 to 700 million USD a year, and it’s been dominated by three to four companies. And they’re all a part of one association, which is very closely linked up with the Ministry of Health.

Tim: And that association has been in favor of keeping these tighter, yeah.

Amina: Yeah, you see the similar models everywhere, right? Like industry, like lobbying activities.

Tim: Yeah, I mean, this regulatory capture, especially in medical devices and health-related issues, it’s so hard because there’s absolutely an essential government role to play to ensure safety. But it’s also so easy for that industry to get in and capture it with these additional regulations. And from consumers on the outside, it can be very hard to tell the difference which is which.

Amina: Exactly, exactly. So that’s another thing. I guess the Japanese FemTech market started to bloom with this idea of a new type of period product, which is period underwear. And you would think that, oh, that’s not tech. But then for a lot of people, it may change your everyday period a little bit better or improve a little. I think that’s a lot more.

Tim: We’ll call it tech. It’s innovation. It’s something new. It’s the same path to market, right? It doesn’t have to have a computer in it.

Amina: That’s true. That’s true. So, the success of period underwear was very important for Japanese markets because it’s something that every month a majority of women will get it. And yet that the product hasn’t really get approval from the government. And that kind of put a pose on a lot of things.

Tim: Yeah, it seems from my outside perspective, the Ministry of Health, the LDP, the media has been very supportive of FemTech and outspoken in how they want to move in this direction. Has that largely been for show? Is that still going on? Are you still running these kind of learning sessions for…?

Amina: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are. We are.

Tim: What’s happening here? Is progress being made? Or it just seems like when we spoke three years ago, things were moving so quickly. And where are we now?

Amina: Well, I guess it’s slowed down a lot. And I do think that a lot that was happening at a political level. I do think so the politicians and people who are at the authority being very helpful. But now that I look at it, no one was trying to address the core issue.

Tim: Which is what?

Amina: For example, period underwear or other sort of regulatory hurdle, a blind spot that people need to be aware of to make this industry bloom. But then there are a group of people that may not benefit from this. One of the politicians told me, there’s no one can say no to women’s health. Everyone will be supportive of you. But once this industry started to bloom and people start thinking, oh, my God, like this new product going to be available, which may disrupt everything that is already available. That’s when people started to sort of put a pause on things. And I started to sort of feel that about two, three years ago. That’s when I decided to shrink the company.

Tim: So, has it just been that it took a few years for Japan’s industry to realize this was a potential threat to sales and start lobbying against it?

Amina: Yes, period product is yes. The funny story is, I was speaking with a few companies who started to sell period underwear in Japan. In the first year, in 2019-20, the authority gave them an approval to say that it’s for period. And at one point, they start saying no. All these written documents are available. So, something must have happened then, which probably is a lobbying pressure.

Tim: Getting back to some of those social changes that you mentioned, the opportunity to use FemTech to reexamine gender roles and what was appropriate to discuss in public. You mentioned that some of this was even impacting TV shows. So, is some of that taboo around discussing women’s health falling away in Japan? Is this also just a trend? Or do you think this change is going to stick?

Amina: I think it’s gradually changing. We managed to throw big events in Tokyo with 5,000-6,000 people. But in the big cities, it won’t change the outside. So, we start to collaborate with the local media. And then the media is starting to host similar events in their regions. I’m from Kyushu, which is down the south. So, I do have a lot of connection. We started from the south. For example, there is a company called RKB, which is a local TV station in Fukuoka. And for the past two years, we’ve been supporting them to host a similar event as FemTechFest, which basically is an exhibition of women’s health products, and then talk shows and workshops for women. And then this year, they had over 2,500 people. Down in Okinawa, Okinawa Times, which is a newspaper company, we helped them host an event. And I think they said they had 3,000 to 4,000 people. And then the recent thing is sports teams, locals, football, baseball, basketball, female teams. They started to contact us and say, can you just help us create some sort of program for our kids?

Tim: Is this really just this disconnect between the business side and the advocacy and awareness? Because if you’ve got a big event with thousands of people attending, are there products being displayed? Is it just Japanese companies are dominating? Or what is the disconnect between FemTech, the social movement in Japan, and FemTech, the startup category in Japan?

Amina: Well, the one answer is the majority of decision makers in Japan are still men, and above the age of 70, 80. You know what’s interesting, though? When we did events in Fukuoka with RKB, I advised the team to host a small reception in the evening where we invite CEOs of local communities and big companies to attend. And they came. They were fascinated by how many people came to the event, but as well as how it was more like a little festival. They didn’t really expect an event like that for women to get so excited. They even said to me, they still don’t understand about the women’s health tech and the FemTech and all this industry itself. But when they see how people were excited, they see the potential there. But how to convert that into their business, that’s still a lot of unknown.

So, that’s the huge gap, I think. It’s not like they’re holding making business decision or getting into this industry. It’s simply just like investment that we talked about in the beginning.

Tim: It takes time for them to understand it?

Amina: Understand it, yeah.

Tim: You know, this is a common theme for anyone trying to promote innovation and change in Japan. It’s just sometimes you feel like you’re in this endless learning phase or endless education phase. So, I mean, you mentioned some of the positive changes in media and that people are talking about women’s health and menstruation on TV, which granted would have been near unthinkable 10 years ago. But like when I watch TV, it still seems to me like people aren’t really talking about women’s health, even the commercials for products that are focused on women health. They don’t actually say what they’re for. Do you know what I mean? They kind of hint at it. Is this taboo still firmly in place or is it starting to change for real? I mean, how much change have we seen in the last three or five years?

Amina: Well, compared to 10 years ago, I think there’s definitely a few changes in a good way. Some of the shows that talked about women’s health or even sexual wellness and all that, it used to be late night shows. But now it has been moved down to 8 o’clock, 9 o’clock mainstream time. But it’s a gradual change. But if you ask any Japanese person, like, do you see any change in the last 10 years? I think they would all say yes.

Tim: So, there’s nothing really stopping people from discussing these things directly.

Amina: But that’s another thing, right? When it comes to this woman’s health or sexual wellness, they’re not intentionally not talking about it. Culturally, people don’t perceive that they may talk about it, but it doesn’t have to be openly talked about. Do you know what I mean?

Tim: Well, I do. I mean, there’s a huge gap between, well, this is appropriate cocktail conversation, and you can talk about what a product is for when you’re advertising it on TV. There’s a lot of space between those two ideas.

Amina: Yeah, yeah, I guess so. But we, most of my specialists are in regulations, in a way. So, although we are very split about the wordings and stuff, we’re 100% careful about regulation. So, people who don’t have a knowledge about regulation, they want to be direct, so they use the word to be direct, and then they go against the rules and regulations. Does it make sense?

Tim: Yeah, it does. It does. I am just always and endlessly fascinated by certain trends in Japan that just seem to have overwhelming popular support on all levels, but still get rolled out so, so slowly throughout the culture.

Amina: Well, another interesting thing, the clients at the company that we used to work with, they had some budget on women’s health. Quite a lot of them in the past two years, they came back to us and said, we have to work on women’s empowerment, so we don’t have any more budget for women’s health. And I was like, when I first heard it, I was like, well, if that’s what you think, that’s all right. But then I started to hear that from so many other companies. So, these people, they’re not really understanding, they’re just being told what to do. And it’s just simply a trend. So, the company made a decision, we have to do something on women’s health, let’s do it. And now it’s the empowerment.

Tim: Certainly a lot of it is just trend following, people getting on the bandwagon, and that does have an effect. But it just seems like support for FemTech, not as a technology, but as a social movement, seems to have a lot more support than that.

Amina: Well, now that we have a female prime minister.

Tim: Well, yeah, I was going to ask about that. So Prime Minister Takeichi, although she’s a woman, she aligns herself really strongly with the more traditional elements of Japanese society. Do you see a shift in support for FemTech, one way or the other, resulting from this?

Amina: I would say yes, and I think Japan needed her. Not that I’m fully supportive of her policies and all that, but I think it was difficult for Seiko Noda, who’s the LDP, but very much on the support of women. Two famous female leaders, but has a drastic difference in policies. But I think the fact that we have now a female prime minister, regardless of their political views, I think it’s important. And then now the head of Tokyo is also a female. Shinagawa-ku, Minato-ku, all these major districts in Tokyo, we also have a female mayor. So, we started to see female leadership, and I think that would eventually, hopefully, will have an impact.

Tim: So, you see it as a step forward in terms of the hearts and minds and general acceptance, but not necessarily in terms of specific policy?

Amina: No, definitely not. But the fact that we have a female prime minister, Tokyo mayor a female, Shinagawa mayor, I think that is important. And then the next generation, you know, we’ll have someone who has more passion for women’s health or women’s environment or empowerment in general.

Tim: Well, hopefully we won’t have to wait a whole generation. So, it sounds like progress has been made socially, politically. What remains to be done? Is it just making sure there’s enough momentum to push back against corporate lobbying and make sure these new regulations get pushed through? What really remains to be done?

Amina: There are a few things. One is actual tech to be on the market. So, Kegg is going to be on the market. And it’s interesting, quite a lot of companies are now starting to look into the Japanese market. Politically, economically, relatively stable, relatively big populations. And the second thing I would say is the people’s mentality has to change. And I think the ideal product for that is, again, period underwear. We have to have a new type of product available for women. We should be able to specifically claim that it’s period underwear. And I think slowly then women’s mindset will change.

Tim: So, the critical thing is really just having a few use cases, a few real world success stories that consumers can see and the politicians can see and say, hey, that worked for the better.

Amina: Well, Japanese big companies, they like success stories. Once they’re there, I think a lot more will likely to move towards it. When it comes to period underwear, I’m still working with the government. Hopefully in about six to 12 months, they’ll act on it.

Tim: You know, it’s interesting. At this point, is the difficulty in getting approval for these products, it doesn’t sound like it’s specifically FemTech or female related. It sounds like introducing a product for men’s health would face the same type of established players. Is that the case or does being focused on women consumers make it harder?

Amina: Yes and no. Yes and no. But if you look at, let’s say, Viagra. Viagra took about three months to get approved, whereas pill got about 30 years to get approved.

Tim: Well, yes. But I think that goes back to the fact that, you know, when you’re saying most of the legislators are men in their 60s and 70s, that tends to get fast tracked. Yes.

Amina: Yeah. So it’s difficult to say that, okay, this is the problem. We have to solve it. I think a lot of different people are involved, different stakeholders. And in general, with the Ministry of Health, their role is to protect the people, so they want to be careful in giving approval to this product. But, okay, this is it. Regulatory and rules-wise, what they’re saying kind of makes sense. But when we try to apply that in the real world and asking companies, okay, can you spend this much money and time to get this product approved, it doesn’t match up. And then that’s like a market entry bar, and that has been created by the industry side. As you said, this scenario is probably found anywhere, probably even outside of the medical device industry.

Tim: Well, I mean, sure. I mean, every time a new industry is opened up in Japan, it’s had to go through a similar problem of fighting the lobbying from the incumbents.

Amina: But I feel like when it comes to women’s health, there’s definitely another layer of difficulty. Maybe it’s a gender issue. Maybe it’s the historical, cultural thing. I don’t know yet.

Tim: Well, Amina, it really sounds like it’s related to what you mentioned before, that the people who are making decisions don’t really understand the problems. It’s not something they deal with. And when you first bring it to them, they’re like surprised by it. And so it sounds like maybe just this FemTech sector has to start from way behind what other sectors would.

Amina: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So, that’s what I meant by there’s no infrastructure.

Tim: But it sounds like things are getting better, and you’re about to have a couple of genuine products in the market here.

Amina: Yeah. So, when I first started in 2017, all these companies in the US and Europe, they were like series A level. They just had the prototype and then getting the product in the market or trying to get into FDA approval. And past five years, the product started getting in the market instead of being sold. So, that’s when I started to see a change in the US and Europe. So, what’s happening is now that Trump happened and with the geopolitical situation has changed, all these companies now start to look into a safer market, which is Japan. Because of the health system, in Japan, we don’t really have women’s health tech companies yet. Majority of them are still in the US or in Israel or in Europe. Now that these companies are interested in getting into the Japanese market, having more tech product available may change the conversation around the market or industry here in Japan. At the moment, we just don’t really yet have the product.

Tim: Well, that’s something to look forward to. You know, like you say, we need those success cases to build on and build that confidence.

Amina: Yes. Hopefully the Kegg, the fertility tracking device is happening this month that we get to see some traction there.

Tim: I hope so, too.

Amina: But you never know. You never know.

Tim: Okay. Amina, thank you so much for sitting down with me. I really appreciate it.

Amina: Well, thank you.

Outtro

And we’re back.

Japanese FemTech as a social movement seems as strong as ever, which is good because it’s still as important as ever. However, things are more challenging for FemTech as a market. Even with a solid value proposition, sometimes widespread awareness and overwhelming goodwill simply does not lead to sustainable sales.

Now, this problem is not unique to FemTech, of course. Many green energy and sustainability startups are facing similar challenges right now. As Amina explained, when the FemTech market was still a small niche, no one felt threatened by it, and it was easy for everyone to support it. However, once it looked like things might cross the chasm and move beyond the early adopters and into the mass market, well, that’s when the incumbents started to see a threat, and they responded in order to protect their turf.

I’ve been working for years with Japanese enterprises, trying to get them to pay attention to startups, so it’s nice that they’re noticing, but wait, No, not like that!

Rather than startup collaboration or actual product innovation, the Japanese incumbents responded with lobbying and regulatory capture. On one hand, you know, that’s to be expected. That’s what large companies will always do if they think they can. But on the other hand, innovation depends on our ability to prevent that kind of corporate lobbying and special treatment. Regulatory capture absolutely kills innovation.

Of course, medical and health-related startups always face a challenge. Safety is important. I mean, people’s health and well-being is at stake here. Those testing requirements and those expensive multi-stage approval processes are there for good reason. And there has been some progress here as well.

Amina has managed to change not only hearts and minds, but regulations. She’s helped get laws passed that simplify and clarify regulatory approval of FemTech products. And also, the Cabinet Office has established the Regulatory Sandbox, which gives some startups, including health tech startups, temporary exceptions to many regulations.

Together, all this explains why FemTech not only will develop differently in Japan, but why it must develop differently in Japan.

 

If you want to talk more about FemTech or cumbersome regulations in Japan, Amina, I would love to talk with you. So come by disruptingjapan.com/show252 and let’s talk about it. And if you enjoy Disrupting Japan, share a link online or just, you know, tell people about it. Disrupting Japan is free forever and letting people know about it is the absolute best way you can support the podcast.

But most of all, thanks for listening. And thank you for letting people interested in Japanese startups and VC know about the show.

I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for listening to Disrupting Japan.