Skype veterans back Wahanda, online wellness network

Written on June 30, 2008 – 10:23 pm
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer

Alarmclock:euro is reporting that Wahanda has raised seed funding from Ambient Sound Investments, an Estonian venture capital firm set up by four of Skype’s founding engineers, the investors behind last.fm and a former top executive of Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts.

Wahanda, a Native American word for “great spirit and creator”, is an online health and wellness community plus e-commerce marketplace where local spa and wellness businesses, pros and consumers come together. The London-based company was founded by Salim Mitha, former Senior European Director - Search & Social Search at Yahoo! and Lopo Champalimaud, ex-Managing Director European Lifestyle at lastminute.com. According to the company blog, the website opened up to the public today.

I’m not really a spa person, but from the looks of it, the site seems to cater well to its audience with the standard bag of tricks: Wahanda has an exhaustive network of spas, salons, fitness centres and therapists and a slew of community features like user-generated reviews, ratings, Google Maps integration, social bookmarking buttons, etc. The site also sports a genuine calm look, clear navigation and enough ways for visitors to interact with the content.

Wahanda

I hope you like that post!

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Ambient Sound Investments, ASI, skype, Wahanda

About the author: Robin Wauters is a Belgium-based social media consultant, startup advisor, blogger, entrepreneur, Twitter fanatic, conference organizer and allround web addict. Between trying out just about every new web application that gets in his sight, he advises local startups like ContactOffice, Oxynade and Yuntaa. And when he's not busy trying to keep tabs with what's going on in the virtualization & cloud computing industry as managing editor of Virtualization.com, he's probably working on the organization of Plugg, an annual celebration of European web entrepreneurship.

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7 comments/trackbacks to “Skype veterans back Wahanda, online wellness network”

Jul 11, 2008: Gym Class Heroes Muscle Boys Muscle Girls
Gym Class Heroes Muscle Boys Muscle Girls…

I didn’t agree with you first, but last paragraph makes sense for me…
Dec 21, 2008: “Tough time to be starting a company”?? Is it really? « Buster’s Brown Blog
[...] about its future, and given that Wahanda has started gaining traction and is in a good position funding-wise, when now confronted with the infamous line above, I actually confidently respond, [...]

By Patrick de Laive on Jul 1, 2008

IN 1997 you needed the word Internet in your business plan and you would raise an immediate amount of several millions. Nowadays, the keywords seem to be: A Social Network/community for ….

I think we can conclude that all websites need to have some social elements in it, but to fund every website that is aiming to be the next Facebook for people who visit wellness centers, is going one bridge to far for me.

[Reply]
By Anon on Aug 27, 2008

Its a nice site if not a rip-off of a similar one started a year earlier called Luxury Fitness & Beauty. I understand they are looking for an investor to grow their business in a similar vein.

[Reply]
By Robin Wauters on Aug 29, 2008

Hi Anon, you should have noted that you work for Luxury Fitness & Beauty :)

[Reply]
By Anon on Sep 8, 2008

Did I forget to mention that ;)

Seriously, Wahanda is a nice site and i was only jesting. Although feel that they may be going down the wrong path although with the experience behind the business i guess they probably know what they are doing.

[Reply]
By Truyen on Nov 7, 2008

g

[Reply]

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