See our guide to this year’s hottest new businesses and most innovative founders in the complete 2024 Startups 100 index.
For the business that demonstrates committed diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative and how it has been embedded in the company.
Startups 100: DEI AwardFounder: Meg Murray-Jones
Year founded: 2021
Website: postpartumplan.co.uk
Did you know that two million mums left the global workforce last year? Lack of support and recovery for new parent employees is costing society emotionally and financially. And Postpartum Plan is here to do something about it.
Postpartum Plan is a membership-based healthcare resource that provides new parents with access to a team of professional care experts, including physiotherapists, nutritionists, and emotional health therapists.
Focused on an oft-neglected mental and physical health journey, the company’s mission is to support parents to recover and heal from the first few months that they spend with their baby, all the way through to the return to work.
Service users are given a ‘virtual village’ of support for B2C and B2B members through monthly membership (B2C) and corporate gifting (B2B). Parents can buy membership individually at a cost of £30 a month, or employers can gift it to their employees.
The startup was founded in 2021 by Meg Murray-Jones, a postpartum expert who was inspired to start the company after her own experience with postpartum anxiety – which has risen by 45% since the pandemic.
Jones believes that the current postnatal support systems available to parents aren’t fit for purpose, and that they deserve better support.
“A lot of postpartum companies focus on physical recovery,” Jones told Startups, “[but] emotional health is just as important as physical health, and it can have a significant impact on a new parent’s ability to recover and thrive.”
Postpartum Plan has quickly become a popular resource for new mums and dads, with members reporting significant improvement in their physical and emotional wellbeing. It has also been praised by a number of corporate partners for its commitment to offer services to all parents.
A lot of postpartum companies focus on physical recovery. Emotional health is just as important as physical health.
Available for birthing parents, non-birthing, and those going through adoption and surrogacy, Postpartum Plan is also deliberately gender neutral, with only the recovery pillar being solely for women. We also shortlisted it for our 2024 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion award.
In the near future, Jones wants Postpartum Plan to become the “employee benefit of choice” for progressive companies looking to enhance their staff benefits packages. She also hopes to convene a panel of postpartum experts to drive change at a legislative level.
With its holistic approach to recovery and commitment to supporting working parents, the company is well-positioned to have a transformative impact on postnatal care. As a new addition to the Startups 100 family, we look forward to watching its own postpartum journey.
At Startups.co.uk, we’re here to help small UK businesses to get started, grow and succeed. As well as rounding up some of the biggest success stories in our annual Startups 100 list, we have resources to help new businesses get off the ground.