When the CEO/founder of Korean startup ONEOFTDIGM (OSD) Chang Hun Lee got diagnosed with pre-diabetes, he understood the cost and time spent on healthcare. In his freshman year at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Chang decided to create something that will solve various health issues prevailing in the society.
Chang’s company OSD has developed Fitrus, an “all-in-one” ICT-Based Personalized Mobile Wellness Care Platform powered by pocket-size IoT devices that measure, analyze, and accurately report eight biometric indices can indicate any underlying health issues. Chang believes Fitrus can help society deal with lifestyle health problems like obesity and diabetes.
Chang spoke to koreatechdesk.com about Fitrus, his startup launch story, challenges, and future goals.
1. Please tell me about your background and what motivated you to get started with your company?
I am CEO of OSD, and we provide an ICT-based personalized mobile wellness platform to help people find a healthy lifestyle. Since freshman year (20) at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, my life was about solving various challenging issues around the community. Twelve years ago, I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes. I spent thousands of dollars on medical devices, personal trainers, and weight loss programs and realized that all these methods are too expensive, time-consuming, and inconvenient.
2. What is your current main product, and can you share any previous product pivot story to the current product?
We started with just hardware and realized the difficulties and limitations to help people find a healthy lifestyle with only hardware products.
Today, we provide a service called, Fitrus, an “all-in-one” ICT-Based Personalized Mobile Wellness Care Platform powered by pocket-size IoT devices that measure, analyze, and report timely and accurate eight biometric data along with AI-Based exercise and nutrition contents, SDK, Tablet Kiosk, and even Web Services to maximize health, engagement, and productivity.
3. What is the market opportunity for your service?
The global health care market is vast. 65% of the global population is either overweight or obese; 40% of these people develop diabetes, heart diseases, and cancer. And every year, 3.2 million patients die due to obesity, which is the second leading cause of death that is preventative.
4. What’s your business model, and how have you grown your revenue? What strategy worked best?
– We started with a one-time hardware sales business model and generated a total of $2 million in revenues along with 17,000+ users.
– Today, we use a subscription-based business model where we charge B2C customers $15 per month on Citrusthe -90 days program where customers can make friends, effectively lose weight, receive various cash awards, and most importantly, have fun.
– We charge B2B customers $199 per month on using our ‘All-in-one’ service that includes digital health contents, Kiosks, web dashboard, etc.
5. Please tell me more about your founding team.
– Daeho and I met during a government project prior to our current startup.
6. How much money have you raised in total so far? When was the recent funding round?
– We have raised a total of $800,000 with $ 5.5 million post valuation. Our recent funding round was in December 2019
7. What are the biggest challenges and obstacles that you have faced in the process of fund-raising? If you had to start over, what would you do differently?
– Our biggest challenge was finding the right investor that shares our initial vision. This is because we met various investors who had a different vision and milestone; therefore, in the beginning, we wasted our time trying to change our vision based on each investor that we met.
8. What are your milestones for the next round? And what are your goals for the future?
– We are currently seeking a $2.5 million Series-A investment with an $8 million pre-valuation.
9. How have you attracted users, and with what strategy have you grown your company from the start to now?
– In the beginning, we focused on 5-10 initial customers who purchased our device instead of spending thousands of dollars to SNS marketing. We have updated both our hardware and software based on customers feedback.
– Surprisingly, customers recognized our efforts and passion and introduced new customers by spreading the word about our solution.
Today, we have generated a total of $2 million in sales and got loyal customers.
10. What do most startups get wrong about marketing in general?
– Most startups try to imitate big corporates’ marketing strategy where they spend thousands of dollars on SNS marketing.
– I believe the most effective marketing strategy for a startup is to start with 5-10 initial customers and then work your way up.
11. How do you plan to expand globally?
– We plan to expand globally through a subscription model for both B2C and B2B.
12. How do you handle this COVID-19 outbreak situation for your company’s survival in the future?
– We leveraged COVID-19 by conducting remote fitness and employee wellness pilot in the United States to build various references to tackle the global market.
13. What are the top-three books or movies (TV series) that changed your life?
– Zero to One
– Shark Tank
– Black Mirror
14. How do you keep yourself motivated every day?
– Fitness, Music, watching startup videos.
You can follow about ‘Fitrus’ on,
Read more about Fitness startups on koreatechdesk.com,
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- Korean startup Strong Friends’ smart “Exergaming” product FAVE makes exercising at home exciting
- The Co-founding couple of Wave Company that makes sports apparel with benefits of kinesiology taping and compression
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