53.7 F
San Diego
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
-Advertisement-

Celebrity Aura May Help Health, Well-Being App to Profit

Wellness guru Dr. Deepak Chopra can only write so many New York Times bestsellers. At some point, if his many followers want to know something as obscure as what supplement to take for reducing jet lag, they’re going to have to download his smartphone app, Jiyo.

Jiyo, a Japanese-Chinese Buddhist word pronounced JYE-oh and meaning “to use yourself,” sends users digital reminders that guide users to health. It receives data from any number of wearable devices and filters the feedback through a set of alternative medicine principles Chopra champions, including the importance of getting enough sleep, building loving relationships and eliminating toxicity.

All that comes free of charge. The company, also named Jiyo and based in La Jolla thanks in part to recent talks with the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp., charges a $1.99 per month subscription for informational presentations lasting more than about five minutes.

Jiyo-enabled corporate wellness programs cost extra — $5.99 per user monthly — and the company also makes a percentage on sales through a retail store curated by Chopra himself.

Celebrity Branding

With Jiyo, Chopra and company co-founder Poonacha Machaiah are solidifying Chopra’s standing in the preventative and personalized-health market they estimate at $433 billion worldwide, up 78 percent since 2010. They’re also stepping into the world of celebrity-branded wellness counseling, where in August former online news publisher and alternative medicine advocate Arianna Huffington raised $7 million in Series A funding for her own app.

Poonacha Machaiah

Machaiah is a mobile technology entrepreneur who has worked in New York City and the Bay Area. He said Jiyo springs from four years spent contemplating how to reach a billion people with Chopra’s message that personal well-being leads to societal well-being, not the other way around.

Jiyo takes a more holistic approach to health than other devices and apps that merely compartmentalize it, Machaiah said.

“You can have six-pack abs,” he said, “but if you don’t have love in your life, you won’t have well-being, either.”

Sharing the Space

Other companies have embarked on a similar path, including Encinitas-based Owaves, which like Jiyo focuses on health factors such as exercise, sleep and nutrition. In a twist CEO Dr. Royan Kamyar said may be unique, Owaves also helps users schedule healthy activities so wellness becomes forward-looking instead of retrospective.

Kamyar called Jiyo “smart” for its embrace of Chopra as a key influencer in holistic medicine, in that he’s someone people trust with their health and purchasing. He likened the product to Huffington’s wellness app, which like Jiyo is tied to an online marketplace for wellness products.

“I would imagine that people who (enjoy and benefit from) Deepak Chopra’s work would enjoy such a service,” he said. “I don’t see why not.”

But celebrity won’t guarantee the business’s success, he said. Jiyo will need a passionate and supportive tech team, as well.

“At the end of the day, Deepak and Arianna, if they want to be successful, then they need to make sure their team is just as passionate about their product or service as they are,” Kamyar said.

The Workforce

Jiyo’s app launched in June in New York City and now has three U.S. employees, one in New York and two in San Diego, Machaiah said. That’s not including a roughly 20-person development team in India, a digital media marketing team of consultants based in New York and an outsourced video and digital content development group in Carlsbad.

The company said it expects to hire mobile developers in San Diego and manage a satellite office in the Bay Area, adding about 10 engineering and design jobs during the next year.

San Diego Ties

In some ways, San Diego County was a natural choice for the company to locate its headquarters. Machaiah sees the area and California as a whole as being a “very conscious community.”

There are substantial professional and business ties, as well: Chopra is a clinical professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego. Additionally, UC San Diego, Jiyo and The Chopra Center, an educational center in Carlsbad, agreed in September to launch the UC Wellbeing Channel. The channel’s wellness content will be available on the smartphone app and the university’s systems broadcast network, UCTV.

Setting Up Shop

Still, the regional economic development corporation took nothing for granted during discussions with the company about where it would establish

its international headquarters. With San Diego on Jiyo’s short list, the EDC made a strong business case for why the company should locate here, said Sean Barr, senior vice president of economic development at the San Diego Regional EDC.

With input from EDC board members supportive of Chopra’s ventures, the organization offered Jiyo assistance in finding a small office in La Jolla. The EDC continues to help the company find a program manager to organize events around town, and hopes to link Jiyo with local educational programs that may lead him to future software engineers.

Jiyo did more for San Diego’s economy than set up shop locally, Barr said. It pledged an undisclosed sum to become an investor in the EDC, and volunteered a local employee to serve on the organization’s economic development committee.

That level of involvement tells him Jiyo is “a company that’s very committed to San Diego, very committed to helping grow the economy and ultimately giving back.”

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-