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SUCCESS STORY OF FITBIT, LIVE YOUR LIFE IN A HEALTHIER WAY

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When maintaining a proper diet or leading healthier lifestyle bumps into our way, we often tend to master the postponing game. Do you know why? Somewhere we are not encouraged enough to wake up every morning and have a good workout and wait till it turns into a serious health issue.

There is a minor part of the population who consciously tracks their fitness metrics and follows a healthy lifestyle. Honestly, many of us think that it’s an extravagant lifestyle to keep track of your health records and especially the Indians show minimal efforts henceforth. So, to keep your health records in track in an interesting way and give some push to yourself, Eric Friedman and James Park launched Fitbit in 2007, a company that produces smart wearable devices to track your health. It is interesting how Fitbit rose from just an idea twelve years ago given that it almost hit dead end several times and now competes with business tycoons like Apple and Xiaomi.

James Park

After passing out from University School at Cleveland, Ohio, Park went to Harvard for studying Computer Science but eventually dropped out. He joined Morgan Stanley as a Peon in 1998 and continued for a year. In October 1999, Park co-founded Epesi Technologies, a B2B integration software followed by co-founding Wind-Up Labs in 2002. Park’s life story is something that catches the attention of today’s generation, isn’t it? Dropping out of college and creating such a massive empire for himself.
Park along with Friedman thought of doing something incredible with the small sensors and hence came up with the idea of Fitbit to digitalize even the fitness and health of normal people.

Eric Friedman

Friedman is a Computer Science engineer who completed both his Bachelor’s and Masters from Yale University. After passing out in 2000, Friedman joined Epesi Technologies as a Software Engineer and then co-founded Wind-Up Labs with Park in August 2002. Friedman also worked for Microsoft in his early career and before co-founding Fitbit he worked at CNET Networks and Engineer Manager. Currently, he is serving as the CTO of Fitbit.

The beginning and the Turmoil

Already after founding Wind-Up Labs, both Park and Friedman didn’t have any intention to stop. They wanted to do something unique with small sensors and discovered a huge potential in the sphere of health. If small devices can be made out to track personal fitness data, they thought they might have a really good audience. At first, they created just a small circuit board within a wooden box as a prototype which helped them raise $400,000 and eventually more once they started furnishing their experimental gadgets.

In 9th September 2008, both of them attended the TechCrunch 50 Conference and received 2,000 pre-orders for their product in a single day. They accepted the order and realized later that it was a not-so-good move as they didn’t have a manufacturing unit at all. After a few months of the constant search for an appropriate supplier, the product started showing some flaws. The fate of Fitbit turned upside down and the co-founders thought of giving up. But after the topsy-turvy, they were finally able to launch the fitness tracker in 2009. They shipped around 5,000 units of this tracker and received another 2,000 pre-booking. Since there was no third party in the business, Fitbit made a robust profit out of it.

The Success

In 2011, Fitbit introduced another new tracker much better than the previous one as this one came with an altimeter and many other modifications. At the end of 2014, the company’s annual revenue summed up to $745.4 million and in the next year the company filed for its first IPO and the amount was $358 million. This year turned out to be one of the best for the company as more than 18 million fitness trackers were sold given that no new products were launched in this year.

The company also has a pretty impressive list of acquisitions starting from March 2015. Fitbit acquired Firstar in 5th March 2015 for $17.8 million followed by acquiring Coin, a credit card company in 2016. In 2017, the company acquired a smartwatch based start-up, Vector Watch SRL and in the next year a software company called Twine Health.

The company currently manufactures fitness trackers mainly for heart rate, sleep quality and number of steps. Though the company has faced a few shady plots for revealing too much information about Fitbit’s users to each other through its feature, still the company has managed to stay on the top in terms of wearable technology.

omnivis

OmniVis : Medical Science Meets Technology to Make the World Better and Disease Free

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In the bigger picture, the present condition of our world is no less than mayhem. On the one hand, science is creating wonders with technology making our lives easier but on the other hand, millions of people are dying every day due to lack of treatment and development in medical science. Who is to blame for this? Are we way too ignorant to make significant contributions in the medical community? Or the price is so high that we have blatantly stopped trying? There are so many people dying every minute suffering from incurable diseases or due to late detection of infections in their body. Though the renowned and biggest research centres of our world are working together to invent instruments that can easily detect diseases, they are way too costly for common citizens.

With the zeal to alter the future of our world and stop it from destruction, four scholars of Purdue University, Katherine Clayton, Tamara Kinzer-Ursem, Jacqueline Linnes and Steve Wereley, came up with a unique solution to detect infectious and deadly diseases, which are both times efficient and affordable. With the mission to create affordable medical equipment, these four enlightened minds founded OmniVis, a company that will reach out to common people, help them detect disease and make out society better in terms of well-being.

Founders of OmniVis

Currently, Katherine Clayton is the CEO of the company with Ursem, Linnes and Wereley working as the Advisors.

Katherine Clayton Founder OmniVis
Image Source: halcyonhouse.org

Clayton, who is originally from San Francisco, went to Pursue University to complete her PhD in mechanical engineering. When she was an undergraduate student, she had already decided to work with healthcare products and make easy infection and disease detection equipment available to common people. When Clayton was a kid, she lost someone very close to her, due to the absence of better tools in the medical field, and hence, this was the beginning of her dream to do better for the community. She, with other three scholars, co-founded OmniVis in 2017, and since then, it has received worldwide support and funding.

Ursem is associated with Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering as an assistant professor which is under Purdue University. Her main area of research involves molecular biology, computational biology and neuroscience.

Linnes is also an assistant professor in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering as well. The Linnes Lab basically works to create technologies that can detect pathogens in a time-efficient way and stop them from propagating. She also has her own start-up, PotaVida founded in April 2010. The company’s goal is to develop pocket-friendly water purifiers and reach to the rural areas of the entire world.

Currently, Wereley is a professor at the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. His specialised fields are fluid mechanics and optics. He is also the founder of a company called Microfluidics Innovations.

The Idea

Since all of them belonged to a strong research background, OmniVis emerged out as a successful idea. More than a business, it is really an idea that inspired every company, research institutes throughout the world. OmniVis has created products that can detect Cholera with less than an hour with its concepts and techniques.

Currently, OmniVis works with iPhone but soon it will incorporate the software in Android and start testing the beta version. OmniVis works in a simple process with few steps, collect the sample, detect pathogen and map location. OmniVis detects and shows the location on the map from where the sample was taken to alert the authorities. And all of these are getting done within 30 minutes with the technology of OmniVis.

The Achievements

In 2017, OmniVis acquired the first place in Vodafone Wireless Innovation Project funded by Vodafone Foundation. In 2018, OmniVis was nominated for World Changing Idea Finalist. In June 2018, the company received Phase I SBIR Grant from National Science Foundation. In the same year, OmniVis won the 2018 AMPLIFY Pitch Competition where participants from 46 different countries participated. After winning the Biological Innovation Award in February 2019, OmniVis took a step ahead and expanded out of Indiana. In May 2019, the team reached out to Bangladesh and shared the benefits of OmniVis products with them.

Some of the major investors at OmniVis are Vodafone Foundation, Deloitte, Fast Company, Purdue University, halcyon and many more.

Moikit: A preventive tech solution to avoid Kidney Stones

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There has been a sharp rise in Kidney stones (also known as a renal calculus or nephrolith) cases around the world in recent years. Approximately 1 in 11 people in the United States are affected by Kidney stones.

The leading cause of kidney stones is not drinking enough water. Stones commonly have been found in those who drink less than eight to ten glasses of water a day. When there is not enough water to dilute the uric acid (constituent of urine), the pH level of kidneys drops and becomes more acidic. This acidic environment in the kidneys is instrumental in the formation of kidney stones.

What if there is someone who reminds you to drink water and also keep track of your daily water intake. Moikit a Chinese tech startup has come up with a smart water bottle to track your water consumption, compile your health data and keep you hydrated.

Story behind Moikit

In 2012 Xiaoliang Li’s (founder of Moikit) wife got diagnosed with kidney stones due to poor hydration habits. When Xiaoliang studied more about Kidney stones, he learnt that less water intake leads to a host of other diseases and problems in people all over.

Drinking less water means less frequency of urination. Less urination tend minerals that cause kidney stones to settle down in the kidney nephrons and the urinary tract. When one drinks plenty of water, these minerals get flushed out through the urine instead of settling down.

In order to fix this widespread problem of hydration, Xiaoliang brought together a team to create a smart bottle that uses technology to keep people hydrated. Seed the smart water bottle from Moikit is one of the many products that Moikit is developing to solve the problem of hydration.

Seed’s built-in smart water consumption algorithms compute your body’s hydration needs according to water intake, body composition, daily activity level, and outside temperature. With this information, Seed will custom design a water intake schedule that meets your individual needs. Through small vibrations and the LED display, Seed will remind you when you have forgotten to drink enough water.

Seed using inbuilt Bluetooth transfers your water intake data to Moikit app on your smartphone. Seed also integrates seamlessly with third-party health apps and devices.