From fertility to hormonal GPS. How Ukrainian startup Ovul works
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In our recurring Who Are These People segment, Vector offers founders an opportunity to discuss their projects, covering aspects such as their products, marketing strategies, monetisation, investments, and plans. The focus this time is on Ovul, a Ukrainian startup. This reusable wellness device and its accompanying application use a daily drop of saliva and artificial intelligence to monitor women’s hormonal trends.
Ovul’s team are members of the L’Oréal Startup Hub 2.0 programme, an initiative by UNIT.City & L’Oréal Ukraine, aimed at supporting Ukrainian startup growth. The event’s exclusive media partner is Vector. We are creating a range of content focusing on the event and its participants.
Vector’s editor-in-chief Yuliia Tkach interviewed Serhii Zatsarynin, CEO and co-founder, about the product’s features, promotion, investments, and plans.
Conception
Ovul has four co-founders:
- Serhii Zatsarynin, CEO. His background includes over 10 years of experience in medical diagnostics. His prior role at Siemens Healthineers involved business development and the implementation of new medical technologies. His academic credentials include a PhD in Economics and technical expertise in aviation engineering. He is a Fellow of the Longevity Biotech programme.
- Ihor Kovalenko, CTO. His expertise spans over 10 years in embedded systems development, programming, and hardware engineering. He has held positions at Siemens Healthineers, Kodisoft, and the Ye. O. Paton Electric Welding Institute. He is a summa cum laude graduate of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. He is in charge of Ovul’s technical architecture, product engineering, and AI infrastructure.
- Kateryna Andreieva, CMO. Her expertise includes over a decade in hospitality, food innovation, and branding. She is the founder of Dip Food and Vlasna Kitchen Studio, and the author of a culinary book. Her education includes qualifications in tourism, marketing, and nutrition. Her role at Ovul involves positioning, communications, the brand’s visual identity, and engaging the audience.
- Roman Hodz, CPO. He has a proven track record of launching Zemits Kosmetik Experte, Ulevate, AIW.systems, Profit Whales, and Sponsoreds. He is an expert in e-commerce, AI solutions, and product scaling. His role at Ovul involves commercialisation and expansion into the US and EU markets.
The story began with Serhii’s personal experience: he and his wife were trying for a third child. «There were no accurate digital solutions — only urine dipsticks: messy, imprecise, and embarrassingly outdated. It seemed surreal — here we are in the era of telemedicine yet clinging to tools straight out of the 20th century,” the entrepreneur recalls.
They started out building a smart ovulation tracker, but as the founder puts it, it quickly became clear that hormones shape far more than just a woman’s ability to conceive — they impact everything from sleep and skin to emotions, hydration, sexuality, and anxiety.
The truth is, most women still lack access to these data. We decided it was time for something better. A conversation with Ihor, a hardware-savvy engineer, sparked a breakthrough: they could create a compact, low-cost, reusable microscope that reads saliva structures. A week was all it took for the team to put together a first prototype, using nothing but a child’s microscope and a camera. It proved successful: Serhii’s wife became pregnant in the following cycle. Just a month after, the team finalised an egg-shaped prototype, which was sent to the first users in April 2023. Three months on, the AI model, trained on genuine user data, started to recognise hormonal patterns in saliva. It brought together proven biological technology with the most recent developments in computer vision».
The product is developed by a team of six specialists.
Product and audience
Ovul is a saliva-based microcrystalline diagnostic technology that enables non-invasive monitoring of oestrogen levels and other hormonal markers. This reusable wellness device and its accompanying application use a daily drop of saliva and AI to monitor a woman’s hormonal trends.
To use it, open the device, clean the glass slide, put saliva on it with your finger, and close the device. Once completed, the result will be sent to the app (iOS and Android).
The CEO explains: «We want women to be aware not just of their current cycle phase, but also of the reasons behind their feelings: why waking up felt difficult this morning, why their skin unexpectedly turned sensitive, why energy is low after yesterday’s stress, and what immediate steps they can take to restore their wellbeing».
According to Serhii, Ovul has over 100 active users each month, with four pregnancies achieved through the platform. The team has submitted five patent applications and registered its trademark.
According to analysts, the global FemTech market is projected to reach $75 billion by 2030.
The hormonal wellness, fertility, and perimenopause market segment where Ovul operates is estimated at $12–15 billion. The early American-European market alone, driven by open-minded users, is valued at $500 million.
The core users of Ovul are women between 24 and 45 years old who face cyclical changes in their energy, mood, and wellbeing, are planning pregnancy, or navigating perimenopause, as well as those concerned about mental health seeking daily insights into their hormonal profile.
Business model and marketing strategy
The startup currently focuses on the B2C segment: device sales starting at $179, with a monthly subscription of $9.99 for access to AI-powered analytics, personalised recommendations, a calendar, and a daily hormone diary. The company is running pilot projects in the US, Europe, and Asia in partnership with fertility clinics, menopause coaches, and longevity medicine experts.
«At the heart of our marketing strategy is the creation of a new product category for women, in which hormones are recognised not as a mysterious process, but as a vital aspect of daily life, subject to personal habits and lifestyle choices.
Our strategy centres around educational communication. Our first step was to promote the subject via social media channels like Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, together with an SEO blog and educational video content. Through accessible, refined and scientifically sound content, women are helped to connect with sensations they have experienced for years but never found the language to describe.
Another vital direction is creating a community that goes beyond usage and truly lives alongside Ovul in their daily rhythm. It requires collaboration with cycle coaches, nutritionists, mindfulness specialists, fertility advisors, fitness professionals, wellness centres, and menopause- and hormone-focused coaching schemes, involving the women every step of the way.
An outsourced creative and technical team supports marketing on the operational front, delivering visual materials, user-generated content, SEO architecture, and driving campaign dynamics. Real women’s stories are the soul and heart of our influencer marketing», — the entrepreneur explains.
Investments
The project has also received around $300,000 in personal investment from its co-founders. Additionally, they were awarded a $5,000 grant as winners of the Generation H Bootcamp at SET University, and secured non-dilutive financial and mentoring support from Google for Startups.
They have opened a $1 million SAFE seed round to support FDA clearance, US market expansion, and EU launch planned for Q2 2026.
Plans
«Our journey leads to a new standard — Hormone-powered wellness: a paradigm where women’s wellbeing is embraced, not overlooked or suppressed, serving as a guide for choices and actions».
In the near future, our product will roll out a personalized advice system, analysing hormonal fluctuations as well as the daily influences behind them. The focus will be on hydration levels, sleep quality, physical activity, stress load, and an intuitive assessment of mood and wellbeing.
Our goal is for hormonal literacy to move beyond being a response to issues or an exclusive medical privilege, and instead become a daily instrument of self-care», — summarised Serhii Zatsarynіn.
The Ovul team — participants in the program to support the development of Ukrainian startups L’Oréal Startup Hub 2.0 from UNIT.City & L’Oréal Ukraine The parent company of L'Oréal Paris condemned Russia's war against Ukraine and announced the suspension of investments and sales in Russia. However, the L'Oréal Paris factory in Kaluga continues to operate and pay taxes to the Russian budget. . Vector is the exclusive media partner of the program: we are preparing a series of articles about the participating startups.
The Vector editorial team supports the development of Ukrainian innovation. The publications do not promote or support the position of individual partners.
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