Rajendran says the inspiration for the company came from two experiences a few years back. The co-founders of online platform Hola Health: Lenin Rajendran, Thiru Rajendran and Dr Vishnu Gopalan. Hola Health promotes itself as an online platform connecting patients with doctors in just minutes for consultations, medical certificates, and prescriptions. Lenin Rajendran is one of three co-founders of the Perth-based start-up along with brother and chief technology officer Thiru Rajendran and his family doctor turned chief medical officer Dr Vishnu Gopalan. Hola for the standout performerīut the stand-out performer in the health industry category and the fifth overall ranked Fast Starter this year, is Hola Health. The medical cannabis market in Australia grew 93.5 per cent per year on average between 20, according to industry market research firm Ibis World, and is expected to continue strong growth. MediCann ranked 71st, boosting its revenue by 175 per cent to just over $3 million between 2019-23. Perth-based MediCann Health is another medical cannabis player showing promising growth. Vitura Health boosted revenues from $21.7 million in 2020-21 to almost $120 million last year, giving it the second-highest revenue on the list. Medical cannabis players, in particular, showed strong results.ĪSX-listed, Melbourne-based Vitura Health, another medical cannabis firm, ranked 91st, though its revenue figures are among the most impressive. From about $78,000 in 2020-21, Nectar Brands hit revenue of $11.5 million last financial year, growth of 1119 per cent, enough to earn it eighth place in this year’s Australian Financial Review’s Fast Starters List.Ĭompanies from the health space make up about 10 per cent of this year’s Fast Starters list, a figure illustrative of growing demand for better, cheaper and more convenient access to healthcare products and services. Nectar now has 24 staff and has just moved into new offices in Hawthorn in Melbourne’s inner east, and the commercial success of the brand to date is evident in its revenue figures. “We are on a mission to close the gender pain gap,” she says. Tan cites the female pain gap – the phenomenon in which pain in women is poorly understood and more mistreated compared to pain in men – as an example of an area underserviced by the existing market. This year they launched Hazel, an online clinic dedicated to dealing with female pain. The following year the pair launched Cultiva, a high-end medicinal cannabis product they sell through their Polln app.

Launched in early 2021, Polln is an online platform that connects people with authorised prescribers of medicinal cannabis and pharmacists who dispense cannabis products. “And that’s when we launched our first brand, Polln.” “We saw the need to bridge the gap between conventional healthcare and holistic, evidence-based natural medicine,” Tan says. He exited LeafCan in 2019, and in January the following year, founded Nectar Brands with his partner of 11 years, Tan.

Nasr’s first start-up LeafCan came in the early days of the medical cannabis start-up boom in Australia. Grace Tan and Chris Nasr, founders of Nectar Brands which has a focus on natural medicine. “That pushed me into looking for other options and medicinal cannabis became a big part of my world.” “We went down a rabbit hole looking for natural alternatives,” Nasr tells The Australian Financial Review. In the following years, Tan says the couple saw first-hand how conventional opioids strip away a patient’s quality of life. When a little over a decade ago Nasr’s aunt suffered a stroke that left her paralysed down one side, she became dependent on morphine patches to help manage the pain. The inspiration behind Chris Nasr and Grace Tan’s Melbourne-based healthcare start-up, Nectar Brands, is deeply personal.

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