This article was published in One Million by One Million Blog.
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Sramana Mitra: Talk about your business model. Your doctors are your end customers?
Sungwon Lim: Yes.
Sramana Mitra: Is it a subscription service or a diagnostic model?
Sungwon Lim: We charge per service order. Our customers are hospitals and veterinarian oncologists. We sell our service to them and they add their own margin to the pet owners. Pet owners are usually the payers. We are B2B.
Sramana Mitra: How much does it cost?
Sungwon Lim: We cannot disclose the actual price. The added price to the pet owners is about $1,000 to $1,200.
Sramana Mitra: There’s a markup that the hospital puts on your price?
Sungwon Lim: Right.
Sramana Mitra: The price that the pet owner is paying is about $1,000 to $1,200 per test?
Sungwon Lim: Yes. Some doctors, in their private office, charge $700.
Sramana Mitra: Got it. If you look at the TAM, what are we talking about? How big is this market – this particular segment that we are discussing?
Sungwon Lim: There is a publication out there. There are so many cancer patients in both dogs and cats. Six million cats and six million dogs are diagnosed with cancer every year compared to 1.7 million humans every year. Lymphoma is the largest cancer in dogs and cats. It’s 20% to 30% of cancer. It’s around 2.4 million if it’s 20%.
Sramana Mitra: At the same time, there is only a small segment that can spend the money to get this done. What percentage is that?
Sungwon Lim: We have international branches. We did a survey in each country. In the US, it’s very high, especially in the Bay Area. Veterinary oncologists in the Bay Area estimated that 70% to 80% will most likely avail of the service.
Sramana Mitra: But this is a particular geography. It’s a very high-income area. In general, that is not the number.
Sungwon Lim: Right.
Sramana Mitra: You haven’t done the comprehensive TAM analysis. Are you a venture-funded company?
Sungwon Lim: Yes.
Sramana Mitra: What numbers did you present to gauge how big a market we are talking about?
Sungwon Lim: We started with 12 million and 20% are lymphoma and leukemia. We took half of that and then 20% of that will use our service. So that’s 10% of the entire market.
Sramana Mitra: What timeline are you looking at? Right now you are doing lymphoma and leukemia for dogs. Are you going to do more of the pet cancers first?
Sungwon Lim: Yes, we are expanding to other countries. We have already set up our lab in Japan. We will launch our lymphoma and leukemia service in Japan in Q4 this year. Then we are expanding in the European market in 2024. We already commercialized our dog service for lymphoma and leukemia. We are also expanding to solid tumors.
Sramana Mitra: Great. Very interesting stuff. Do you have competitors in the market?
Sungwon Lim: Personalized medicine for pet cancer was very rare three years ago. More and more companies are coming up now. We are the only company who do the live cancer cell plus AI. There are two more genomic sequencing-based companies here.
Sramana Mitra: Good luck to you. Thank you for your time.
