Ms. Sei Cho,CEO of nanoni Inc.
Many companies want to promote women’s empowerment to improve employees’ well-being but are not sure about what to do first. Nanoni Inc. offers carefull, a femtech-based well-being platform to suggest measures customized for each company. We spoke with Ms. Sei Cho, CEO of nanoni Inc.
―Could you tell us about your career and how you started your business?
I was born in China and have lived in Japan since I was five years old. I graduated from a university in Japan and joined Google Japan right after graduation.
After joining the company, I had a medical checkup and something wrong was found in the gynecological examination, so I started researching gynecological diseases. I found a lot of information that I hadn’t known before, including that 80% of women are infected with human papillomavirus (HPV), a cause of cervical cancer, at some point in their lives, and that women affected by polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which affects about 1 in 10 women, can have difficulty getting pregnant.
However, since very few people possess this knowledge, so prevention is very difficult.
In addition, if you get these diseases, you may have anxiety about continuing with your job. You may regret thinking that you could have taken preventive action if you had known the information earlier. I want to eliminate circumstances that lead to those regrets, so I started our services to provide women with information and options to protect themselves.
―Did your experience with Google Japan help you start your current services?
Yes, very much so.
At Google Japan, there was a culture where employees could openly tell their coworkers that something wrong had been found in their medical examination and what treatment they were receiving.
So, when I was faced with a disease, I was able to talk to my coworkers right away rather than dealing with it alone. This experience reminded me that such a culture is really important.
In providing our services, we are very conscious of being able to not only provide seminars to our client companies but also help them create a culture because it’s a key success factor for the promotion of genuine diversity.
―Could you tell us about the business of nanoni Inc.?
We are engaged in business in the field of femtech, a field that uses technology to resolve women’s health issues.
Specifically, we offer carefull, a training and well-being service package specializing in women’s health, to companies that wish to further promote women’s empowerment.
carefull is a well-being package that provides more than 20 services at a discount price, including various online seminars, a community where users can consult experts anonymously, online medical care, and egg freezing.
―How does it differ from other companies’ services?
One of our main features is that we provide not only tools, but also consulting and installation support for companies that want to fully promote women’s empowerment.
The themes and content of our seminars are customizable according to the client’s internal issues, which will help foster a corporate culture as I mentioned earlier.
For example, we held a seminar on menstrual problems for women working in automobile factories, where more than 700 people participated. We also offered a program combining a seminar and well-being support, which helped improve the health issues of some participants to the point where there was little impact on their work.
Our philosophy is to “build up a platform”. We have talked with various companies to find out their issues and needs. They said that there were many femtech services out there, but they were lacking the know-how to select appropriate ones. Even if they adopted a service specializing in a particular health issue, some employees might feel unfair, so they wanted a service to comprehensively cover all concerns and needs of employees. We have recognized that such challenges and needs exist.
So, our platform is working with more than 20 femtech services to offer a well-being package. This is a big difference from other companies’ services.
―Why do you focus on women’s health issues?
For instance, Japan has the highest number of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) cases in the world.
However, the success rate of IVF in Japan is half of that in the United States, which is a very poor record.
The cause of this is simply age. It’s said that the reproductive function of women decreases rapidly after the age of 34-35. Nonetheless, the average age of women undergoing IVF in Japan is 40. This is why the success rate of IVF in Japan is low.
It’s important to provide an opportunity for considering fertility treatment earlier.
It’s also a big challenge to provide a wide range of options in case IVF doesn’t work, because those who continue treatment for a long time are physically and mentally burdened.
This is also important in terms of personal quality of life (QOL) as well as the cost of medical care in Japan, since fertility treatment is now covered by public health insurance.
In order to resolve these issues, we provide services focusing on women’s health issues.
―How important are women’s health issues to companies?
Women’s health issues should not be addressed only by those individuals concerned. They are very important issues from a corporate perspective.
For instance, fertility treatment takes a lot of time, including going to hospital regularly. One in five fertility treatment patients have had difficulty balancing treatment with work and have left their job.
Women are also characterized by a rapid change in their hormonal balance with age, resulting in different problems for different ages.
For example, many women in their 20s and 30s suffer from menstrual cramps, which leads to decreased workforce productivity. It’s said that one in two women in their 40s and 50s, who are old enough to become managers, suffer from menopause. As many as 40% of them have considered declining a promotion because they would feel guilty if they made more mistakes at work (due to menopause).
On the other hand, when it comes to companies’ efforts in the area of health, the reality in many cases is that those efforts are limited to mandatory health checkups and stress checks, and companies are still unable to take measures to address the health issues specific to women.
―Could you tell us about your future plans?
This year, we are conducting joint research with the University of Tokyo on the topic of what impact the use of femtech has on human capital management in companies. In the case of large companies, they often adopt our services with the expectation of promoting women’s health and empowerment as well as diversity rather than using them solely for health management. Based on the activities mentioned above, we will provide support and services that lead to the tangible improvement of workforce productivity of female employees.
In addition, since we have already been able to reach 750,000 employees in total, our medium-to-long-term objective is to build an ecosystem where, for example, collected data is used for drug discovery research in cooperation with pharmaceutical companies.
| Company Name：nanoni Inc. |
| Founded：May 2020 |
| Number of employees：20 (including contractors) |
| Main businesses：Developing and selling carefull, a cloud platform for promoting women’s empowerment; consulting on women’s empowerment; and supporting the implementation of a women’s empowerment system URL：https://xxnanoni.com |
This article is part of a series of articles introducing venture companies working together as ICF members to resolve societal issues.