In Hong Kong, we’re used to images of our smog-choked harbour and celebrate at the sight of clearer skies. While we know the air outside is less than perfect, but what about our indoor environments?
Last year, there were a number of reports linking too much time spent indoors to the surge of Myopia (nearsightedness) in children and an extreme form of this disorder has reportedly more than doubled in Asia since the 1980’s. Besides eye conditions, our respiratory health is also being affected.
The US Environmental Protection Agency cites studies that show indoor levels of pollutants being 2 to 5 times, sometimes more than 100 times, higher than the outdoors. While we seal our homes in hopes of keeping the pollution out, we’re actually breathing in a toxic cocktail made up of dust, paint and chemicals from culprits such as cleaning products.
“People generally don’t know that indoor air can be worse than the outdoors,” said Dustin Jefferson Onghanseng, co-founder and CEO of uHoo - a Hong Kong hardware startup that wants to improve your indoor environment. “We stay inside 80% of the time on average: You sleep at midnight and head out to work at 7am to stay indoors for work. You might go out for lunch, but generally you’d spend the majority of your time inside.”
uHoo is a device that measures your indoor air quality at the office or at home using multiple sensors, then sends insights to your smartphone. Taking into account indoor elements such as temperature, humidity, PM 2.5, volatile organic compounds and carbon dioxide, uHoo’s machine learning algorithms learns your preferences over time to help create a more optimal indoor environment in the future.
Instead of just sending out data that the average person may find tough to relate to, uHoo creates personalized alerts and recommendations so you can actually make changes to your behavior (ie. stop using bleach as a cleaning product). While there are already a few indoor air quality monitors on the market, uHoo differentiates itself as the defender of those who suffer from respiratory illnesses.
“We want to understand how your trends go in terms of the pollutants in your home, and we want to record your asthma and allergic rhinitis attacks. That’s where the machine learning comes in,” said Onghanseng. “How do you correlate what happens in your home when you get an attack? Is there a way for us to predict when you might get an attack so we can prevent it?
According to Onghanseng, the global market for sensitive groups that suffer from rhinitis is US $11 billion, while those with asthma make up $37 billion. Rhinitis and asthma attacks are caused by a number of triggers, including dust mites and air pollutants. As for China, which is one of uHoo’s target markets, there are 36 million people with respiratory conditions such as asthma, bronchitis and rhinitis and 13 million households who have purchased air purifiers. These groups are within the affluent upper-middle class living in the top 30 most polluted cities.
Despite Hong Kong’s proximity to China, entering the Mainland market will require clever maneuvering - and uHoo has been easing in by way of winning competitions, such China Europe Business School’s (CEIBS) ‘INNOVATEChina.’ Another is to take on strategic investment, which uHoo is actively seeking at the moment.
The young hardware startup has been plugging away at their product for just half a year, and has recently taken to crowdfunding platform Indiegogo to raise US $30,000 to initiate production. In exchange, uHoo will offer their device to backers starting at $129. The campaign has a three-pronged goal: attract pre-orders, raise money to pay for moulds and officially launch their startup to the world.
Although uHoo is the only Hong Kong hardware startup building indoor air quality solutions at the moment, there are already a number of players in China ranging from the low (Air.Air! which sells for just US $59) to the high-end (Foobot, formerly known as Alima - which is available on pre-order for $232 and aims to hit the market by January 2015). Leading the pack is Beijing-based MojiChina, the makers of one of the most popular weather apps in China (Moji Weather) - which has amassed over 40 million daily active users.
After closing a Series B round in May of last year with Alibaba Group as their main investor, MojiChina launched ‘Airnut,’ a pair of weather stations one year later. Thanks to their giant weather-minding user base, ‘Airnut’ has sold almost 10,000 units to date.
Still, CTO Peter Jiang laments that consumers still think $163 is expensive and said price has been the biggest barrier to the B2C stream. Besides educating the market, Jiang also wants more hardware startups to join the air detector space in order to drive prices down for both consumers and entrepreneurs.
“Air monitoring is not a big market in China, even in the highly polluted Northern area. Although we are leading the competition, we’d like to see more companies compete with us and help educate the market,” said Jiang. “When that happens, the cost of components and parts will surely be lowered after more people join the market.”
With France’s Foobot about to hit the shelves in January and Hong Kong’s uHoo steadily easing its way into the Mainland market - Jiang might just get his wish. In the meantime, education on indoor air pollutants is still greatly needed before consumers warm up to making hefty purchases in the air detection arena.
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