CEO Corner: Bioniq’s Vadim Fedotov on a New Era of Personalized Supplements
With hyper-personalized blends backed by blood test data and AI, Bioniq is working to change the narrative around supplements
In 2017, Vadim Fedotov got the idea to create a product that could help people not just understand what’s going on inside their bodies, but take actual steps to improve.
After a couple of years of research and testing, in 2019 he launched Bioniq, which leverages blood testing and an AI-powered recommendation algorithm to create highly personalized supplement blends.
The brand currently offers two products: Bioniq Pro, which uses blood test data to inform supplement recommendations, and Bioniq Go, which recommends supplements based on a questionnaire and previous users’ blood biomarker data.
In July, the London-based Bioniq raised $15 million in a Series B round, earmarking those funds for product development and growth in the United States, Middle East, and Europe. Bioniq also plans to build a corporate platform for medical, wellness, and athletic institutions.
Fedotov sat down with Athletech News to discuss how he got inspired to become an entrepreneur, Bioniq’s brand evolution over the last five years, and why true personalization is the key to changing people’s perceptions of the supplement industry.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you decided to create Bioniq?
Vadim Fedotov: I grew up in Germany playing every single team sport there was. I was quite tall – I’m now 6’9” – so basketball became my focus. By 16, I started joining professional teams, including playing for the German national team. During a game against the U.S. national team, I got recruited to play Division One college ball, joining the University of Buffalo Bulls. During my career, I had four torn ACLs, so I was exposed quite early to sports medicine, physical optimization, recovery, and innovation, which have stayed with me throughout my corporate career. I went into management consulting, and after that, I joined Groupon in 2011, before the IPO. I was one of the youngest CEOs in 48 countries.
During my corporate journey, it hit me that even though I had a sports background and was interested in my health, I still felt sluggish and had brain fog–I felt like I was physically and cognitively not there. When I went to the doctor and told him about my symptoms, he conducted a blood test and said everything was fine. The phrase “everything was fine” caught me off guard because I had all of these symptoms. And he said, “What you’re looking for is optimization. Traditional medicine heals you when you’re ill, it’s not focused on optimization.”
That’s when I realized I wanted to create something that teaches people what goes on inside of their bodies but also gives them personalized solutions on how to optimize. That’s how Bioniq started.
ATN: There are a lot of ways to approach physical optimization. Why did you choose personalized supplements?
VF: When I started back in 2017, I looked at the market to try and figure out what to build. There was a big demand for DNA, but DNA will tell you what’s wrong with you on a chronic level, it won’t tell how you can improve over time. There was also a boom of so-called personalized supplements, which put pills in a bag, shipped them to you, and told you, these are the pills you need. I call that packaged, not personalized. At-home blood testing was super interesting to me, but when people received their blood results, they didn’t know what to do with them. There was no actionable follow-up.
My thought process was, “What if I can combine educating you about what’s going on inside of your body, provide you with personalized products, and do so on a regular basis?”
In 2018, I ran a pilot on 40 random people in my network. One of those people was a head of performance for the UFC in Las Vegas. And after six months of Bioniq, he called me and asked me to come fly out to Vegas to meet with him and his boss. They told me, “We’ve never seen anything like this before.”
I literally quit my day job, and two months later, I launched Bioniq in London. This was in January 2019 and ever since, we’ve been expanding. As of last month, we were selling in over 63 countries, although the majority of our consumers, over 80% now, are in the U.S.
ATN: Besides personalization, Bioniq is known for using granules instead of pills. What are the benefits of granules?
VF: The granules are a patented technology developed in Switzerland around 25 years ago. Current pills are made with starch or gelatin; every time you take a pill, you spike your insulin levels so you can absorb the supplements that are inside. The toxicity from the pill itself is sometimes worse than the benefits of the vitamins.
Granules are prebiotics made out of guar, which is natural and good for your body. They absorb inside of themselves the micronutrients that you need and then slow-release them into your body over 12 hours. So instead of drinking pills, which is equal to drinking carbs, granules have a higher absorption level, don’t cause toxicity, and are proven to have additional positive effects like prebiotic digestion.
ATN: How has Bioniq’s product line evolved since you founded the brand in 2019?
VF: Our first consumers did 150 biomarkers, including stool, hair and urine. It was a six-month commitment, I think it was over $3.5K. It was a very white-glove, hands-on concierge service. Our medical director would drive to people’s homes during the blood test and explain to them what they should be doing.
We knew we needed to be able to scale. We developed Bioniq Pro, which is a 50-biomarker blood test that you can upload if you already have your blood test results, or you can take a blood test with one of our partner clinics.
Last year, we developed Bioniq Go, which is a questionnaire-based product that can predict your blood values based on our algorithm, which itself is based on blood tests we’ve done with over 100,000 users. Today, our questionnaire is 82% as accurate as a blood test, which is the highest on the market. We believe this figure can get higher, but achieving 82% is quite impressive.
ATN: Many consumers today have the perception that supplements and multivitamins are ineffective or not worth the money. How does Bioniq work to fight against this perception?
VF: It’s very simple: we’re the only quantifiable supplement company on the market; we’re the only company where the consumer knows whether our product actually works. That’s because you do a blood test before you start Bioniq Pro, then you get the supplements, and then you redo the blood test. We’re not telling you it works. We’re telling you, “Look for yourself and see the difference, see the changes.” 92% of our customers see significant improvements after three months.
On top of that, we only use Swiss-made products. In Switzerland, the regulations for supplements are the same as for pharmaceuticals. When you buy (supplements) in the U.S., you never know who produced them or what’s inside. There are a lot of companies right now receiving backlash because they’re putting something on their label but they’re not showing the dosage.
ATN: In July, Bioniq raised $15 million in a Series B funding round. What are your goals for the future?
VF: Whenever you fundraise, you’re trying to do two things: improve the customer experience and add additional features so your consumers are even more satisfied with the product. We’re fully focused on improving our Bioniq Go and Bioniq Pro products and giving consumers the best experience when using them.
As we try to educate the market on why personalization is key, we have a clear focus on the North American/U.S. market, since we’ve seen incredible demand there. We’ll also focus on the European and Middle Eastern markets. We want to get Bioniq Go and Bioniq Pro into as many hands as possible worldwide. We’re in 63 countries. Hopefully, we can expand beyond that very soon.