Ellyfe is a healthtech startup developing a hydration-monitoring wearable, designed specifically for older adults.
The company’s journey began with a deeply personal experience for Co-Founder & CEO Keerthi Busanaboyina, who lost her grandfather following dehydration-related complications. Seeing how easily dehydration can go unnoticed in older adults until it becomes serious gave her a strong motivation to build a solution that could help identify hydration risk earlier.
Today, Keerthi leads Ellyfe’s vision, commercial strategy and partnerships, while Co-Founder & CTO Hemanth Kumar Talupula leads the technology, AI and caregiver platform.
Together, they are building Ellyfe with a shared mission: to make proactive hydration support a practical part of everyday care for older adults.
We applied to Foundervine’s 2026 Venture Forward accelerator at an important stage for Ellyfe. We had validated the problem, tested our technology in real care environments, and started generating pilots based validated commercial traction.
We knew how to build and develop the solution, but we also realised that building a strong company requires a different set of skills.
Venture Forward gave us the opportunity to strengthen our fundraising strategy, investor positioning, and commercial thinking, while learning from experienced founders, operators, and investors.
For us, it was about turning Ellyfe into a scalable, investment-ready business.
We also wanted to learn alongside ambitious founders and experienced operators, while gaining valuable perspectives from investors who could help us sharpen our thinking as we moved into the next stage of growth.
For us, it was the combination of practical learning and the people around us.
The programme helped us think much more clearly about fundraising, investor readiness and how we communicate Ellyfe as a business.
We particularly valued the pitch practice sessions. They created a safe space to test our story, receive honest feedback and become more confident in how we present Ellyfe to different audiences.
We also really valued being around other founders. Hearing how other people approach fundraising, customers and difficult decisions often makes you look at your own business differently.
One of our biggest learnings was that building a strong product is only one part of building a successful company. Focus and alignment are just as important.
As technical founders, it is easy to spend most of our time improving the product or exploring every new opportunity that comes our way. Venture Forward guided us more strategically about our customers, commercial model, fundraising approach, investor readiness and how clearly we can communicate the value and vision of Ellyfe.
It helped us understand that not every opportunity needs to be pursued immediately. The most valuable opportunities are the ones that align with our current priorities, strengthen the business and move us closer to our next meaningful milestone.
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The programme helped us become more confident and intentional in the way we lead Ellyfe.
One of the most valuable aspects of Venture Forward was being surrounded by founders, mentors and experts who openly shared their experiences and perspectives. This gave us the space to challenge our thinking, ask better questions and approach important decisions with greater clarity.
As founders, we are constantly balancing product development, customers, partnerships, fundraising and the day-to-day demands of building a company. The programme helped us become more disciplined about where to focus, how to prioritise and how to communicate Ellyfe’s vision clearly to different audiences.
It also reinforced an important lesson: leadership is not about having every answer. It is about being open to feedback, staying composed in challenging situations and making informed, realistic decisions even when there is uncertainty.
Overall, Venture Forward strengthened our confidence not only in how we communicate Ellyfe’s vision, but also in how we work together, make decisions and lead the company through its next stage of growth.
We entered Venture Forward having already generated around £11,000 in pre-launch revenue through paid care-home pilots, giving us strong early commercial validation.
Since completing the programme, we have built on that foundation by growing our pipeline to approximately 1,300 potential users, progressing further commercial opportunities with care providers, and strengthening our fundraising readiness.
One of our biggest milestones has been being selected as an Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award winner, securing £75,000 in grant funding. We have also received SEIS/EIS advance assurance for our planned £500,000 investment round, strengthening our position as we prepare for the next stage of growth.
Overall, we have progressed from early validation towards building the commercial, funding and partnership foundations needed to scale Ellyfe.
One of the milestones we are most proud of is that Ellyfe has now secured close to £100,000 through grants, awards and other non-dilutive funding.
This includes winning the Care Innovation Challenge, the Santander X Global Challenge Startup Award, and most recently being selected for the Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award.
Each achievement has been important in a different way, but together they have given us further confidence that the problem we are solving matters and that there are organisations willing to back our vision.
For us, the biggest success is seeing an idea that began from a deeply personal experience gradually grow into something with the potential to create meaningful impact at scale.
Our immediate priority is to take Ellyfe from validated technology at TRL 7 into a manufacturable, deployment-ready wearable.
Alongside product development, we are raising £500,000 in equity investment in a major transition towards company growth. Our Innovate UK Women in Innovation funding gives us a strong foundation for this next phase, while the investment round will help us build the wider capacity required to scale.
Ultimately, our goal is to make proactive hydration support accessible to many more older adults and also making digital health remote monitoring available in a more sophisticated way.
We would genuinely encourage founders to make the most of opportunities like Foundervine’s Venture Forward programme.
For us, the programme created valuable space to step back from the day-to-day demands of building Ellyfe, challenge our thinking and look at the business from a stronger commercial and investor perspective.
Our advice would be to come in with an open mind, ask questions and actively engage with the people around you. The value is not only in the knowledge gained, but also in the founders, mentors, operators and investors you meet along the way.
We would also encourage founders to apply the learning while they are still on the programme. For us, the experience became much more valuable when we started putting those insights directly into Ellyfe’s commercial strategy, fundraising, positioning and decision-making.
