Wahanda, a health, beauty and wellness community & marketplace that connects consumers, wellness businesses and professionals through content, community ratings & reviews and commerce.
Basically Wahanda partners with spas, salons and health centres across the world to offer the best deals around and they also have mob deals which follows the Groupon model, where the large number of buyers brings the price right down.
Founded in 2008 by Lopo Champalimaud and Salim Mitha, on Valentines day no less, Wahanda has grown to a point where the site receives over 10 million hits a year and lists 250,000 businesses offering over 5,000 exclusive deals.
"Our vision is to do for health, beauty and wellness what Amazon did for books,"
........................................................................ Lopo Champalimaud
The two young entrepreneurs set up Wahanda because they were frustrated with the lack of online resources to help consumers make informed buying decisions.
Wahanda allows consumer the ability to learn about treatments, read and contribute ratings & reviews, and ultimately transact by booking online with businesses and independent therapists.
Lopo and Salim started Wahanda just before the economic downturn hit, but saw that many people affected didn't want to give up on luxuries, such as spa days, but couldn't afford to go anymore as the recession hit. They took advantage of this, and not in a bad way, they are offering great value and service to customers while helping businesses attract more customers, but they were able to make the most of an opportunity during the economic crisis.
In 2008 they secured £1.5 million in seed funding which helped the duo rapidly grow business and just last week they announced that they had secured another round of funding of £3.5million, which will help fuel growth further and also help in expanding overseas as Lopo and Salim look to take their UK startup global.
The two young entrepreneurs sum up the name of the company, Wahanda, which is native American for 'great spirit and creator.'
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