Bioniq founder on why taking a personalized approach to supplementation has longevity boosting potential.
Last month, consumer health company Bioniq landed a $15 million Series B funding round to advance the global growth of its personalized supplements based on blood biomarker data. The company leverages an AI-driven algorithm and an extensive biochemical database to create customized supplements designed to evolve with an individual’s health needs.
London-based Bioniq has grown rapidly since launching in 2019, boasting a growing foothold in the US, which now accounts for more than 50% of its customer base, and securing partnerships with the likes of Lanserhof and UFC. Founded by a former athlete, the company’s approach has become popular among professional athletes seeking to optimize micronutrient levels and improve performance and recovery. But Bioniq also firmly has its sights set on longevity…
Longevity.Technology: Bioniq’s approach is centered around the idea that a one-size-fits-all approach to nutritional supplementation is inadequate, a message that will resonate with many in longevity circles. With a model based on helping its users make measurable improvements in their nutrient levels and overall health, the company’s personalized strategy is based on years of data collection. Indeed, Bioniq claims its proprietary biochemical database, based on blood test data from customers across five continents, is the largest of its kind. To learn more about the company’s approach, and how it relates to longevity, we caught up with founder and CEO, Vadim Fedotov.
Having played basketball all over the world, including for the German national team, it was Fedotov’s sports career that ultimately led him to found Bioniq.
Former Division 1 NCAA basketball player Vadim Fedotov founded Bioniq in 2019.
“I went through a lot of injuries and had a lot of exposure to sports medicine, in terms of rehabilitation, recalibration of my capabilities, optimizing my health, but also in terms of prevention going forward,” he says. “From a very young age, I was developing a mindset around how to protect myself in the future. I started out focused on preventing injury, but now I’m 39 and I’m thinking more about being proactive about aging!”
Health is not one-size-fits-all
Fedotov is characteristically candid about the role of supplementation in human health.
“I think nutrition is the foundation of your health – something like 70% of your overall health should come from what you eat and drink,” he says. “Supplementation is just an addition to that, but hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent over the counter every year, for supplements that are generic to all of us. And that just does not make sense to me – why should we all take two pills per day because that’s what it says on the bottle?”
At 6’9 and 260 pounds, Fedotov knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the differences between individuals.
“If I take two pills of anything, it will not change anything in my body because my body will not even realize it’s there,” he says. “People are unique, and their supplementation needs are unique, so Bioniq’s approach from day one was always one size does not fit all, especially when it comes to health.”
On his journey to build Bioniq, Fedotov met with many scientists, including a researcher in Switzerland who studied the impact of micronutrient optimization on hundreds of athletes over a seven-year period, and discovered that it improved their physical performance on standardized tests by as much as 7%.
“As a former athlete, a 7% performance gain is incredible, so I asked him how much he thought a regular person could achieve, and he said 35-40%,” says Fedotov. “Immediately I thought this was something that should be available to everybody, but I was told it was too expensive, too labor intensive – the barrier to entry was too high.”
“My thought process was, if we can take this proven model and implement it in a scalable solution, then you might have something that can disrupt the market of off-the-shelf products and get truly personalized solutions into people’s hands. And this is where Bioniq started.”
Personalization at scale
In its early days, Bioniq adopted an exclusive, high touch model – working with a small number of clients, who paid a significant premium for the company’s services.
“We started off with super expensive $3,000 per month products,” says Fedotov. “Our clients knew everybody in the company – the doctor would drop their homes and hold them by the hand during the blood test to explain what’s happening. That’s evolved into Bioniq today, with 100,000 users across 54 countries – we’re literally a global company now. The journey has been incredible, but we started from that simple idea: everybody is unique, so we need unique solutions.”
Bioniq currently offers two personalized supplement products: Bioniq PRO and Bioniq GO. Bioniq PRO ($199 per month) offers the highest level of personalization, incorporating blood biomarker data and allowing users to either upload existing bloodwork or book a test through a partner lab. The data is then analyzed to create a daily supplement formula tailored to address any identified nutrient imbalances. Users also receive one-on-one nutrition consultations with a dietitian to discuss their specific needs.
Bioniq GO ($75 per month) provides a more accessible option by using a questionnaire-based approach to recommend a personalized supplement blend, based on the company’s AI algorithm and blood biomarker data from previous users.
Regardless of the option chosen, Fedotov says that every single customer receives a completely unique formulation.
“Once we started calculating how many options there are, we realized that we’re talking about millions of different options,” he explains. “We haven’t had a single mixture in the history of the company that has ever been the same – even for the same person once they repeat.”
AI-powered customization
The Bioniq algorithm automatically builds each formulation from 120 nutritional “components.”
“We’re talking about micronutrients like iron, vitamin C, D, B6, B9, B12, but also things like broccoli, ashwagandha and amino acids – whatever you need at a given moment, there’s an incredible variety,” says Fedotov.
For each component, there’s a different dosage, depending on an individual’s current biomarkers, which are extracted from blood results as well as responses to a questionnaire.
“As of today, we analyze 50 key blood markers, and from those we can actually extrapolate and understand many other blood markers,” says Fedotov. “We now have the largest proprietary database for regular micronutrient blood testing in the world, and our algorithm is looking at around seven million data points for each person.”
“To formulate your product, we combine the blood test data with information about your demographic, lifestyle, goals, medical history and so on. So, if you’re a 40-year-old man who wants to run a triathlon, or a 25-year-old woman who wants to get pregnant, the mixes will be adjusted to you.”
Supplements that adapt with you
To illustrate the benefits of personalization, Fedotov uses vitamin D as an example, claiming that 99% of the people coming to Bioniq are below recommended minimum levels.
“But let’s say that you’re 40 years old, active and doing workouts five times a week,” he says. “Well, your vitamin D level needs to be higher to support your immune system, so your personal range should be much higher than the recommended minimum. Our goal is not to get you into recommended ranges, it’s to get you into the range that reflects your individual lifestyle and needs.”
The subscription-based model adopted by Bioniq is designed to ensure that the company’s products evolve with the needs of its customers.
“The subscription renews every three months and is based on new information received from our users – a new questionnaire or new blood test,” says Fedotov. “This allows us to see how the dosages for the previous three months have impacted their overall health levels. So, every three months, you get a different product tailored to the needs and the goals of your body.”
After the first three months of their subscription, Fedotov claims that many Bioniq users report better sleep and higher energy.
“For PRO users, we can see notable changes in micronutrient biomarker levels within optimal ranges between blood tests,” he adds. “In fact, 92% of Bioniq members see an improvement in their micronutrient status in three months.”
The future is longevity
With its new funding in place, Fedotov says that one of the key goals is to ramp up global sales of Bioniq GO, which he describes as “one of the fastest-growing products in the whole segment.”
“We aim to showcase the benefits of personalized supplementation and prove why they are the better option than what is currently on the market today,” he says. “We also plan to focus on international laboratory network integrations and additional partnerships with medical, wellness, and athletic institutions.”
Bringing things back to longevity, Fedotov believes that his company’s approach to optimizing levels of key micronutrients will ultimately lead to more healthy aging.
“Longevity is all about how long you can support your body to renew its cells, to not age and not die,” he says. “If we can help you reduce the number of sick days per year by optimizing micronutrient levels, then your body can support more growth of new cells instead of fighting illness. Supplementation is only a very small part of this – exercise, sleep and nutrition are far more important pillars of longevity – but we see our role is to give the body the capability to exercise more, sleep better, and to perform longer at a higher level.”
“We’re not a medical company, we’re supporting people’s path to optimize themselves, which will allow their body to perform better at a later point in their lifespan, and which I believe will lead to anti-aging.”
Photographs courtesy of Vadim Fedotov / Bioniq
