Ktaily says that by the time the company rolled out these services, it was too late. Customers were already leaving the platform. “I think they came up with something that went viral, the concept of where are you from? People found it very appealing. But once they knew that information. You won’t come back in five years and pay for a subscription,” he says.
Sumit Nagpal, a serial health tech entrepreneur and self-proclaimed early adopter of 23andMe, said he was one of the company’s subscribers but eventually stopped logging into the online platform. . He said these reports did not offer much “practical” health advice. “It was never worth life-changing,” he says.
Nagpal’s newest company, Cherish, founded in 2020, develops an AI-powered radar-based sensor platform for health and safety monitoring. He believes 23andMe could have offered more services earlier. For example, they could have offered ongoing personalized coaching on diet, exercise, and other lifestyle factors to keep customers engaged.
In many ways, the 23andMe conundrum is similar to the Instant Pot problem. The first product was so successful that people no longer needed to buy another product.
23andMe is diversifying its revenue streams, signing deals to help drug companies discover drug leads from its vast genetic database. The company partnered with Genentech in 2015, and when that ended, it signed an exclusive agreement with GlaxoSmithKline in 2018. The drugmaker invested $300 million in 23&Me, but that contract expires in 2023 and no major partner has emerged to replace Glaxo. 23andMe recently closed its drug discovery division, but continues to develop new drug candidates already in clinical trials.
The company is currently focused on growing its telemedicine business. In 2021, it acquired telemedicine service Lemonaid. Capitalizing on the Ozempic craze, Lemonade began offering Ozempic, Wigovy, and combined semaglutide through its weight loss program in August. After an initial consultation with a clinician, membership costs $49 per month, and weight loss drugs start at $299 per month for combination semaglutide. “Adding weight loss management for our customers fits directly into our strategy of serving approved personal health through preventive measures,” Wojcicki said on an August earnings call.
But that may not be enough. Estelle Giraud, CEO and founder of Trellis Health, which develops pregnancy health apps, says the anti-obesity field is already crowded. 23andMe needs to prove that it offers something unique compared to other telemedicine providers. “If I’m a customer looking for a telehealth solution, it comes down to brand and trust,” she says.
And establishing trust could be 23andMe’s biggest challenge after a data breach last year exposed personal information from about 7 million customer profiles. It doesn’t help that there has always been confusion among users over the company’s data practices. Although customers must obtain explicit consent to share anonymized genetic data for research purposes, one study conducted by university researchers in 2017 and 2018 found that customers surveyed It was found that over 40% of respondents did not know that the use and sharing of customer data is part of 23andMe’s business. model. When users choose to share their data for research, many of them probably don’t realize that “research” includes helping big pharmaceutical companies develop new drugs. It was.
(Tag Translation) Science
