Tamara Rajah: Live Better With

Tamara Rajah, 35
Company: Live Better With
Web: livebetterwith.com

If you follow the healthcare news, you’ll probably read about at least one ‘groundbreaking cancer treatment’ almost every week. A leading-edge therapy dedicated to helping patients rid themselves of this awful disease.

But what about the solutions for patients in their day-to-day life?

Where are the products and services to maximise their quality of life as they undergo all the gruelling operations and chemotherapy?

These questions have been answered by Tamara Rajah, who has built an e-commerce platform dedicated to helping those living with cancer.

Live Better With is one-shop shop for all manner of aids and supports, helping patients deal with all the manifold side-effects of cancer and its treatment. Now, after winning a string of awards, the business is expanding to help those suffering from other long-term conditions such as the menopause.

Rajah founded the business after becoming intensely frustrated by what she saw while working as a healthcare specialist at McKinsey. Whilst patients with long-term conditions typically receive great medical care, there is a glaring lack of advice available to help them mitigate the ancillary problems.

She explains: “There are actually hundreds of products that can help relieve these symptoms and side effects, from lotions and balms to food supplements to books to mobility aids. But patients and their families either don’t know about them or struggle to find them to purchase. This is hugely frustrating and wrong. And it’s not just cancer, it’s the same with every long-term condition.”

So Rajah resigned from her job to set up Live Better With in 2015.

Right from the start, she was dedicated on personalising her offering to each customer, rather than hitting them with the hard sell. Her website offers a careful assessment service which asks patients about their condition, and the benefits of each product are explained in detail.

Every single product on the site has been recommended or endorsed by those living with the condition, so users have a guarantee of quality and reliability. And the website is supported by a community of 70,000 people including patients, doctors, nurses and bloggers.

Having secured funding totalling $9.5m, the venture has gone from strength to strength. Live Better With has already helped 40,000 paying customers and given advice and information to a total audience of 2.5 million. Users are primarily concentrated in the UK and US, but span 40 different countries all told.

Unsurprisingly, Rajah has earned plenty of recognition from The Sunday Times, Forbes and other esteemed titles, and she’s been named as one of our Inspiring Women in recognition of her pursuit of excellence in the field of healthcare.

Over the next 12 months, Rajah and her team want to go deeper into the cancer communities in Britain and America through brand, partnership and community activities. They also want to develop their new menopause platform in the UK and roll it out to the US market.

In addition to this key focus, Rajah plans to escalate the R&D and manufacturing of its own-brand products, of which there are currently six in total, and develop Live Better With’s physical retail footprint across Britain.