Wellness company Calm announced the acquisition of Ripple Health Group as it becomes the latest meditation app developer to set its sights on the healthcare market.
While the terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, Ripple’s CEO David Ko will now serve as Calm’s co-CEO alongside Calm co-founder Michael Smith.
- Calm’s app provides users with audio content that helps them reduce stress, improve sleep, or strengthen their overall mental fitness. Calm’s 100M downloads make it the most popular meditation app of all time.
- Ripple is the developer of a pair of apps that aim to reduce the burden of caregiving. Care Memo allows patients to communicate with their care teams, while LikePaper helps users organize medical information and set reminders.
- Following the acquisition, the Ripple team will focus on building Calm Health, an upcoming employer solution designed to support employee mental health that will replace Calm for Business after its launch later this year.
- Calm Health will include “content, community, and coaching to drive outcomes across the full spectrum of mental healthcare,” building on the lessons learned from Calm for Business, which covers over 20M lives.
The Takeaway
Unlike Headspace and Ginger’s merger from late last year, which aimed to reach the meditation app’s large user base with additional teletherapy services, Calm’s acquisition of Ripple was geared more towards obtaining talent than existing products. The Ripple team and the appointment of Ko as CEO should help to accelerate Calm’s push into the mental health space, and Calm Health is now a core focus of the company’s product roadmap.
