Editor’s note: This guest post is sponsored by UNICEF.

In my native India, over a quarter of a million stillbirths are recorded every year. Each one is a personal tragedy that could be prevented, and this is the problem that Indian start-up CareNX is solving. Its Fetosense app uses artificial intelligence and off-the-shelf smartphones to make fetal monitoring accessible to mothers everywhere, reducing the likelihood of stillbirths.

CareNX is among a wave of femtech start-ups rising in emerging markets, some backed by the UNICEF Venture Fund which, for over a decade, has invested in open-source frontier tech with the power to transform the lives of children, women and their communities.

Since 2014, the UNICEF Venture Fund has provided 85 early-stage start-ups with up to $100,000 each in equity-free capital – in both fiat and cryptocurrency. This growing portfolio has reached 174 million people and attracted 12.4 times the initial capital invested. Close to half of the start-ups are female-led or female-founded.

Scanning the horizon

Recognizing the market gap and opportunity, we are doubling down on femtech innovations and their power to drive meaningful change. We have launched a five-year femtech initiative, running from 2025 to 2030, that includes an initial call for emerging market solutions addressing the needs of women and girls.

The response to the call has been unprecedented: 1,130 submissions from 85 countries – over half of them from Africa – proving the strength of this growing market. We are looking to invest in groundbreaking tech solutions that improve socio-economic participation and the availability and quality of sexual and reproductive health and rights products and services for girls and women in lower- and middle-income countries.

Working with partners including the Government of Finland, India Health Fund, the Swedish Embassy in Pretoria and Singapore-based Temasek Foundation, we are identifying, piloting and accelerating female-centric solutions for the diverse, unmet needs of women and girls in emerging markets. Our model shows that investing in femtech in emerging markets narrows the financing gap and makes good business sense.

A different spin on impact investing

Femtech is often perceived as niche, with many solutions dismissed or overlooked because of prejudice and stigma around female-centered innovations. As a result, femtech is still an undervalued and under-invested sector, yet it is one that offers enormous potential for financial returns and transformative social impact.

Realizing this promise depends on pairing innovation possibility with gender and social equity – the twin forces shaping the future of impact investing – to unlock femtech’s full potential.

Femtech trends from emerging markets

We have conducted an extensive landscape analysis over the past two years – including reviewing submissions in response to a market research Gender Responsive Innovation Challenge, launched in partnership with GITEX, and our recent call for applications – leading to a set of strategic observations about femtech in emerging markets.

Our key findings:

• Open-source adoption is low among startups. Greater use of open-source approaches could accelerate innovation, improve affordability and expand access for women and girls.
  
• Gender-adapted versions of proven products can expand access and add value, particularly where user bases are heavily female. Improving design to reflect the unique needs of women and girls can drive both broader adoption and make products more investment ready and scalable.
  
• The femtech pipeline is growing, but investment readiness is low.
  
• Mature femtech solutions mostly address fertility and menstruation.

Innovation areas in emerging economies include:

• Health tech: Femtech start-ups are pushing into broader women’s health and wellness beyond fertility, with strong innovation in diagnostics and community health tools. Submissions that we reviewed included solutions for maternal health, oncology diagnostics, HPV vaccination access and HIV prevention, tools correcting gender bias in health data, and systems to track women’s health data. Others focused on supporting community and primary health workers through transcription tools in local languages, health data management, bots, Interactive Voice Response systems, and AI-driven referral tools.
  
• Financial agency: Entrepreneurs are linking women’s health with financial empowerment to strengthen overall agency. Start-ups are tackling critical levers like financial literacy, access to credit and savings, microloans and job-matching. Others have tailored AgriTech tools for female farmers, integrating finance with marketplace access.
  
• Inclusive design:  Femtech innovators are designing for offline-first and vulnerable populations, making technology more accessible and safer for women and girls. Several applications use SMS, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data codes, and Interactive Voice Response to reach users without smartphones. Entrepreneurs are also advancing digital safety, upskilling and real-world protection tools such as women-led mapping of safe public spaces, created by and for women.

Driving systems change

Femtech in emerging markets is an untapped engine of social and financial returns, and our work shows that when innovators design with women and girls in mind, they unlock solutions that improve health outcomes, strengthen financial agency and create safer, more inclusive communities.

Despite this promise, femtech is still underfunded and too narrowly concentrated in areas like fertility and menstruation. For social impact investors, this signals both a challenge and an opportunity to broaden the pipeline, close persistent financing gaps and scale innovations that address the full spectrum of women’s and girls’ needs.

Investing in femtech is not only a moral imperative but a smart bet on the future of global growth. As we onboard our first cohort of investees in early 2026, and look to continue to tailor calls until 2030, we invite investors to join us in unlocking the full potential of femtech.

Sanna Bedi is an innovation specialist with the UNICEF Venture Fund, where she leads the Fund’s investment strategy and manages the UNICEF CryptoFund. Over the past five years, she has led the Fund’s sourcing and due diligence for open-source, frontier technology start-up investments across emerging markets.