The online wellness market is doing very well. With the consequences of the health crisis on the mental health of populations and the growing acculturation of individuals to digital tools, demand has never been so strong. Still built on a colossal number of ultra-specialized players, the market is now beginning to restructure itself, with the entry into play of new, more holistic offers.
The digital response to the epidemic of malaise
Marie Dolle, specialist in the world of tech ‘and host of the blog In Bed with Tech, pointed out that in September 2020, the term “anxiety” was searched 40,500 times on Google. That is twice as much as the previous year. An upward trend largely linked to the consequences of the health crisis on the psychological state of entire sections of the population. Numerous scientific studies have, in recent months, made it possible to quantify the increase in psychological disorders in a highly anxiety-provoking health context. One of the latest CoviPrev surveys, carried out between September 28 and October 5, thus highlighted that 16% of French people showed signs of a depressive state, i.e. a rate six points higher compared to a pre- epidemic. Likewise, 26% of French people suffered from an anxious state, a level 12 points higher. The study points out that nearly 3 in 4 French people declared sleep problems in the week preceding the survey. More seriously, one in 10 French people said they had had thoughts of suicide in the past year. At the same time, the consumption of alcohol and drugs has increased considerably.
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Worrisome rates, which force psychiatrists and psychologists to sound the alarm bells. Were the French so happy before the health crisis? Not necessarily. According to Erwan Mentheour, CEO and co-founder of the Mentors app, a holistic wellness app, the health crisis has only accentuated deep ailments: “Our so-called” modern “lifestyles are harmful to the individual (explosion of chronic diseases, burn-out, etc.), societies (crises in social systems, conspiracies, collapse of social ties, etc.) and the planet (which we know limits without being able to draw any serious consequences). We mass produce chronic physical and mental illnesses through systems that break down societies, overuse and pollute environments ”, he says in an interview for Entreprendre magazine. Far from being the only factor in the mental fragility of part of the population, the health crisis has added to environmental fear, economic difficulties and, more simply, to a modern society whose pace is sometimes experienced as exhausting. . Particularly for Western societies that are massively urban, service-oriented and sedentary.
At the same time, the teleworking imposed on some of the employees by the various confinement measures has led – for the luckiest among them – to a different acceptance of the time lived, a refocusing on leisure, the taking into account of self and rediscovering personal needs. An overall healthy sequence, even enchanted, in a grueling daily life. “Containment has brought the quest for well-being back to the fore” says Brigitte Joubert to Les Echos, psychology and consultant for the Positive You platform. There is no question, therefore, of going back to the life before. One in five French people admitted, in June 2020, to regret the confinement. In this context, applications dedicated to well-being have grown exponentially.
A booming market
And we cannot say that the French lacked choice. The main specificity of the online well-being market is indeed its archi-atomization. According to Marie Dolle, 10,000 applications structure a market estimated, at the international level, at $ 2.3 billion in 2022, an increase of 14% in one year. With its nuggets. Calm, for example, specializing in meditation, is valued at over a billion dollars. In the same segment, but limited to the French-speaking market, Petit Bambou can boast, according to its figures, of more than 8 million users. Even though the practice of meditation was, a decade ago, confined to a few small circles attracted to Buddhist philosophy, today it has spread widely and largely freed from its mystical foundations. Sleep monitoring, mindfulness, yoga, nutrition, sport: none of the areas of well-being escape the creativity of Wellness Tech. And everything indicates that market growth will remain strong in the years to come.
However, the hyperspecialization of the market remains problematic, according to Erwan Mentheour: “In the current offer, there are literally hundreds of thousands of applications that are directly or indirectly interested in our health in its different components, and thousands of devices that continuously capture health data, but there is there is no offer which synthesizes it in a coherent way thanks to a powerful artificial intelligence ”. Little more, Mentors wishes to reconcile individual well-being and respect for the environment. “Starting from individual well-being and positioning it as a social and environmental phenomenon, Mentors, like many of these new transition companies, participates in the structuring of small gestures that change the world” continues, for Entreprendre, Jean-Pascal Pham Ba, co-founder of Mentors.
In business too, “wellness is all”
Large groups have also taken on these issues, aware that well-being at work is a vector of growth and productivity. A study by the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick, in England, concludes that being happy at work could increase employee productivity by 12% on average. No wonder, in this context, that companies are increasing the measures in favor of the Quality of Life at Work (QWL), by making breaks, teleworking, mobility or even sports or meditation lessons within the same company. company. Awareness that allows market players to expand their audience. Champion of French mindfulness, Petit Bambou, has succeeded in forging partnerships with certain large groups, such as SNCF or PayPal.
A large part of decision-makers, whether in companies or administrations, seem to have realized that ill-being has deleterious consequences on entire sectors of the economy. For the private sector alone, a study by the National Research and Security Institute (INRS) estimated the social cost of stress in business between 2 and 3 billion euros per year. Figures comparable to Great Britain, where the 23.3 million days of cumulative absence cost the country’s economy £ 2.8 billion each year. According to Canadian statistics, the return on investment of actions carried out in favor of QWL is between 1.5 and 3.8 dollars per dollar invested. Still young, the online wellness market is responding to real demand. The last stage of its transformation will, perhaps, be its transition to global wellness offers and no longer isolated applications.