AI personalized nutrition platform myAir boosts marketing power for plant-based NPD

29 Mar 2021 --- Personalized nutrition start-up myAir is launching a platform that allows companies to maximize marketing efficiency by gathering consumer data and research on plant-based formulations. 

Embracing a business to business to consumer (B2B2C) model, the end-to-end solution uses machine learning technologies and deep profiling to enable food companies to develop in the functional “food for mood” enhancement or “food for mood” space, which myAir specializes in. 

“myAir’s mission is to empower people to take control of their health and manage their well-being through functional, personalized nutrition,” Rachel Yarcony, founder and co-CEO of myAir, tells NutritionInsight. 

Launching last year, myAir offers a range of personalized nutrition bars designed to provide stress relief. Available via a monthly subscription service, each nutritional bar’s ingredients are chosen based on consumers’ specific stress profiles and cognitive needs. 

These are collected via myAir smartwatches that continuously track psychological and physiological data, such as heart rate variability, respiration, sleep quality and physical activity. 

“When leading food corporates reached out to us and offered us partnerships, we learned that it would enable us to scale up much faster, in new important territories and food categories, and that’s why it aligned with our vision and strategy,” Yarcony adds. 

Rachel Yarcony and Dovev Goldstein, co-CEOs of myAir.Nutrition tech 
myAir cannot currently disclose which food corporations it is partnering with, but the B2B2C model will be launching initially in the US and Japan, with optional partners in Europe. 

Yarcony says her experience is aiding the company in its quest to provide localized solutions at scale. 

“Coming from years of work experience in Nestlé, I believe that food should be ‘glocal’ – be global, act local.” 

“That’s the reason for us to partner with local leading food corporates, to meet the local preferences. That process creates new development challenges and our R&D team is working on the required adjustments.”

US results 
myAir is already reporting positive results in the US, where Yarcony says a surprising amount of interest was shown. 

“We initially believed that myAir’s solution would be relevant to early adopters and technological consumers who have hectic lifestyles or suffer from chronic stress and want to measure and manage it as part of their daily routine.”myAir’s algorithms monitor each customer’s personal stress levels and effects through physiological and psychological data.

“We were expecting consumers who understand the power of super-plants and cognitive self-measurement tools. We were surprised to discover that our consumers are really all across the US and not just from specific states.”

This level of interest may be rooted in the COVID-19 pandemic. Even before the pandemic hit, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared stress a global epidemic. Stress is linked to the six leading causes of death in the world, and in the US alone, it is estimated to cost American businesses up to US$300 billion each year, Yarcony notes. 

“The pandemic increased the stress levels, but in parallel, consumers are more aware of healthy eating and the power of self-management tools. Those trends push the demand for myAir solution,” she asserts. 

“We expect that chronic stress will be part of our life during the ‘new normal’ as well and that the ‘food for mood’ category will keep its growing trend. Seventy-five percent of consumers prefer eating healthier food over taking drugs, and with the personalization mechanism we offer, that option will be preferred.”

Echoing this sentiment, Innova Market Insights listed “Mood: The next occasion” as a top trend for 2021. 

Smart technology
A study using Garmin’s smart tech wrist watches also recently revealed that 73 percent of consumers showed positive effects from using myAir within five days after starting consuming its nutrition bars. 

The results correlate with new research conducted by myAir on its consumers regarding the functional effect of myAir – 72 percent of respondents demonstrating positive effects using myAir within five days of starting with the bars. 

, with additional reporting from Katherine Durrell

By Louis Gore-Langton