Intent.com Launches: Lifestyle Site Founded By Chopra's Daughter
This story was written by Tameka Kee.
Intent.com, a new health, wellness and lifestyle improvement-focused property has launched, hoping perhaps to attract peopleand advertisersin need of some positivity amidst the onslaught of tough financial news. Co-founded by Deepak Chopra's daughter Mallika Chopra and former *Yahoo* director of product management Sal Taylor Kidd, the site lets users create profiles and share inspirational stories.
Santa Monica, Calif.-based Intent.com raised a seed round of funding led by Richard Wolpert in February (Wolpert is now heading MailRoom Fund, part of William Morris). A number of private investors also joined the round: Rich Lefurgy, Kumar Malavalli, Causecast's Ryan Scott and Good Magazine's Ben Goldhirsh. The site had previously been in stealth mode, and Chopra said that they were a few weeks away from raising their first institutional round, despite the economic slump.
Of course, Intent.com runs on an advertising, but Chopra also said that there are content aggregation and distribution deals in the works that should help the site stay afloat amidst trimmed down budgets. For example, a breast cancer-focused content and sponsorship campaign called "Healing the Whole Woman" recently ran across properties like Yahoo Shine, Huffington Post, Beliefnet, and Martha Stewart. Competition is heavy from all kinds of health, wellness and green lifestyle sites and social nets, including PeopleJam, Care2 and others.
By Tameka Kee