Beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a seemingly simple but consequential health problem that our community is dealing with –that can actually be prevented with a simple diet or lifestyle change. However, there is not enough attention given to these issues, according to OSbiome Co-Founder & CEO Ian Chong.

“Every year, about 25 million people die globally due to chronic conditions that are preventable with simple diet or lifestyle changes. That’s every year. For context, COVID-19 amounted to about six million deaths cumulative. Why aren’t we handling lifestyle-related deaths with the same urgency?” he asks in an email interview with e27.

Through his interaction with customers at OSbiome and his previous company, Chong discovered that this abandonment seems to be fuelled by two reasons.

“We have a conflicted relationship between having good health and money. Health often comes with a higher price tag with salads being more expensive than fast food, or requires sacrifice for us to be more ‘successful’ by working overtime [and implementing] the #hustlelife, sacrificing sleep,” he says.

In addition to that, he adds that customers are “overloaded with overly generic information of what is healthy” by chasing the next superfood or getting on the next hyped fitness class.

This is why OSbiome provides customers with bespoke lifestyle and diet recommendations generated from highly complex algorithms, into a form of fun, gamified & bite-sized ‘quests’ that they can easily integrate into their daily lives. These tasks are generated by normalising data points from thousands of peer-reviewed clinical trials, layering them with localised population references and making them highly personalised.

The company’s solution included the provision of a gut health test kit that helps customers easily learn about the diet and lifestyle changes that they need to perform. With this, OSbiome aims to create a five per cent impact globally and complete a mission to help save 1.5 million lives every year.

Also Read: A beginner’s guide into the world of NFTs

“Since we started, we have been able to acquire our initial group of customers who have been amazing in helping us shape the product and our bio-AI. Through machine learning, discovered proprietary bio-signatures within the local population on what a healthy profile is as a benchmark,” Chong says.

It has also achieved other milestones such as building out and upgrading its application to allow customers to track a wide myriad of wellness activities such as sleep and water intake. But one of the most exciting milestones that the company is achieving is its foray into the Web3 space.

Introducing health-to-earn

In discovering how the addition of Web3 elements in their service can make a difference, OSbiome learns that its value lies within its ability to encourage users through rewards. For Chong, this means they can finally re-align the direction of health and money –the challenge that he has mentioned as the background of the problem that OSbiome is trying to solve.

“Web3 is the perfect platform for bringing our vision to fruition. The ability to reward the members within the ecosystem for participating will finally re-align the directions of health and money. Users can now be rewarded for completing tasks such as recording their habits and completing their health quests,” he says.

“Tangible incentives are now completely aligned with their health and wellness [goals]. The healthier you are, the more incentives you can receive. We firmly believe that this dynamic will complete reimagine our relationship with health and bring adoption of our platform into hypergrowth. Other recent projects similar to our health-to-earn model had shown real potential in impacting positive change in people’s lifestyles.”

OSbiome launches its first 3D NFT collection Ome | Pioneer Generation in May, made of 8,888 unique Omes. The characters will have “cute traits that are hand-sculpted” by up-and-coming Singaporean 3D artist @ningthebun.

“The purpose of this collection is to gather like-minded people within the ecosystem who believe in our vision and would want to help us actualise it. We’re mainly getting exposure through grassroots thought leaders in the blockchain space, influencers and communities for now and the interest has been really positive. What’s unique about this collection is that the utility is deep. Owners of these Omes can unlock special earning rates for completing quests, rent them to other players, receive future airdrops for tokens and be the first to access the newest features,” Chong elaborates.

Also Read: Matrixport betting big on NFTs, blockchain gaming to expand its cryptocurrency financial services

Towards the future

The story of OSbiome began when Chong and Dr Corlianò met in the venture accelerator programme Entrepreneur First. The co-founders had very different backgrounds that seemed to complement well with their work at OSbiome.

“Maria left academia in the pursuit of utilising her award-winning expertise in the field of gut microbiology on creating solutions to help people. I had recently exited a real foods e-commerce business jumping overnight from baking in a kitchen to building our bio-AI,” Chong explains.

“We met other potential partners during the programme, but instantly knew we needed to start something together when we realised our vision for the future is eerily similar –a world where health is personalised and accessible to all. Since then, we’ve progressed from running the company from her apartment to now our office with a rockstar team who are deeply passionate about their craft and invested in our vision as well,” he continues.

The company is currently run by a remote team of 10 people that are based in SEA, Europe, and India. It has also raised pre-seed funding from different institutions and angel investors alike.

“We have been very fortunate to have received the trust from both institutions such as Entrepreneur First and Next Humanity Ventures and angel investors alike. Fun fact, our angels were our customers as well!” Chong says.

With the support of its team and investors, OSbiome is ready to run the next parts of its plan. In addition to running its Ome NFT projects and bringing its health-to-earn model to life, it is also looking forward to partnering with national healthcare initiatives in the region to promote healthy living and chronic illness prevention.

—

Fundraising or preparing your startup for fundraising? Build your investor network, search from 400+ SEA investors on e27, and get connected or get insights regarding fundraising. Try e27 Pro for free today.

Image Credit: OSbiome

The post How OSbiome plans to use the health-to-earn concept to encourage healthier lifestyle appeared first on e27.