We first covered Wahanda, a social network for people who use spas and other “wellness” products, way, way back in 2008 but they’ve been busy. After raising £1.5 million to become the ‘Amazon of wellness’ it’s now built the world’s biggest vertical database of health and beauty spas via their Yelp-like social network. Wahanda now has 10,000 venues listed globally (4,600 in the UK alone), while main competitor, the US-based SpaFinder has just over 6,000. Wahanda soft launched in the US in October 2009. Oh, by the way, the global spa economy is worth an estimated $60 billion.
Today Wahanda combines this database with the fashionable-but-profitable business model of group buying power with time-limited daily offers, along the lines of Groupon.