💊Our 12th Investment: OK Capsule — Enabling Personalized Nutrition At Scale. 💊
We are thrilled to welcome OK Capsule to the NEXT VENTŪRES family and to partner with the company on its most recent capital raise. The company was founded in 2019 by Dr. Andrew Brandeis and Noah Austin. Dr. Brandeis was a practicing naturopathic physician and serial entrepreneur prior to founding OK Capsule (“OKC”), helping him intimately understand not only the benefits of personalized nutrition, but also the operational pain points and resource constraints of manufacturing and fulfilling bespoke supplement orders.
OKC operates a white-labeled supplement production platform that enables personalized nutrition provision at any scale. The company targets both SMB and enterprise customers that are looking to provide a personalized supplements product line, but don’t have the operational ability or capital to stand up a supplement manufacturing facility themselves. By leveraging OKC’s headless solution, clients gain access to custom branded personalized supplement provision while forgoing the manufacturing and supply chain backend costs and risks.
As a first-mover in the space, OKC has already garnered infrastructure partnerships with numerous DTC wellness brands that provide personalized supplements to their respective customers. The opportunity to gain diversified exposure to the expected growth within the personalized nutrition space was of high interest to us given the confluence of the following themes:
COVID-19 induced wellness + e-commerce penetration tailwinds. It’s no surprise that the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a significant uptick in consumer demand for immunity-focused and general wellness supplements. The demand for supplements is expected to continue to grow as vaccine rollouts are battling new variant surges and as health and wellness become more significant consumer priorities. In terms of the pandemic’s effect on e-commerce, lockdowns compressed years of growth into months, increasing the penetration rate to all time highs (16.4% in 2021¹) and driving adoption and staying power for digital purchasing going forward.
Precision health driven by digital transformation and interoperable data. The predictive algorithm-driven consumer experiences that digital natives frequently interact with (e.g., Netflix, TikTok) have resulted in hyper-personalization being table stakes across digital interactions. More than 88% of consumers report prioritizing personalization as much as or more than they did two or three years ago². As such, a new value chain is emerging around health data. Individuals are experiencing a data explosion through diagnostic tests, wearables and growing numbers of ‘always on’ sensors at home, work, and in the medical environment. This data will increasingly be used for personalized insights, products and care provision, offering opportunities for existing players and new entrants in the health & wellness space.
Strong demand for natural health & wellness products from emerging generations. Gen Z is the most health conscious generation that we’ve seen, allocating more share of wallet than millennials on wellness products (+5% more) and utilizing natural remedies over modern medication more frequently than millennials (+7% more)³. As a population of 67 million strong in the US, Gen Z represents a rapidly emerging customer demographic that is actively willing to spend more for products they believe are healthier.
We’re encouraged by strategic transactions and signals within the personalized nutrition space such as Bayer’s acquisition of Care/of and Nestle’s acquisition of Persona. We believe DTC will continue to drive innovation in personalized wellness experiences.
We’d like to show appreciation for Chloe Steinberg at Sapphire Sport for the introduction, as well as Mucker Capital, Findaway Adventures, and the other investors who partnered on this collective vision.
More about Ok Capsule here
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