The scale and app system determines the nutritional values of food, making it easier for those with dietary requirements to keep track
Bio
- Age of business: 2.5 years
- Name of business: YuScale System (by Zumo GmbH)
- Location: Bielefeld, Germany
- Team: CEO Kim Kreutz, CTO Mike Lohmann and HOD Ingo Wüllner
- ODINE funding: €100,000
What does YuScale do?
25% of 415 million diabetics have to know the contained carbohydrates of each meal and most of the others have to lose weight. For both this is a lifetime challenge.
The YuScale System is able to determine the nutritional values of ready-to-eat meals with a precision of 80%, by providing a fast but safe process. Our scale/app solution replaces human weakness of guessing and supports diabetics in everyday life and overweight and obese people to change their behaviour.
How did you meet?
Kim and Mike have been working together for 16 years. Ingo is the cousin of Kim’s fiancee and known as Gyro Gearless. We are a great blend of experience from science, development and design. All of us worked in startups before, so we have some good and bad experience in this business.
Where did the business idea come from?
Ingo invented a beer-mat scale. Some of our friends struggled with their diet, so we found a much better application area for the scale. We developed a scale/photo/app solution for a fast and precise food documentation. We moved deeper and found many other cases: diabetics, overweight or obese people.
Are you working with any other partners?
We spent four months in Espoo/Helsinki and part of Vertical, a (very) early stage healthcare accelerator. We started cooperation with Chino.io in order to store our user data compliant to EU laws and regulations. We are now in Berlin for the Startupbootcamp (digital-health) and we applied to the Association of Business Angels.
How has ODINE helped you so far?
Before applying to the program we honestly didn’t know too much about open data. With ODINE we got many valuable insights – now we understand the benefits of open data much better. The funding will help us to validate our product, service and business model.
What advice would you give to other companies pitching to ODINE?
Be prepared and don’t stop applying if you’re rejected once. Every review brings you one step further (we applied four times in the end). Be sure you understand the concept, challenges and chances of open data and how it fits to your own product.
How would you encourage big business to buy into the open data movement?
Open data is the beginning of something big – don’t miss it.
What’s the key trend in open data at the moment?
Changing behaviour for the better and encouraging healthier decisions is one of the next big things coming up for healthcare related businesses. Data, especially open data, will play an important role on the track to find solutions.
[This story first appeared on the Guardian]
