Zireh, an application for fitness
One of the challenges that people face regarding their health is the problem of overweight and obesity, which is certainly affected by people’s lifestyle and nutrition.
In a world where artificial intelligence has come to the aid of most businesses in various fields, businesses have also emerged to deal with overweight and obesity or nutrition science. Cumin startup One of these business models. Follow our conversation with Dr. Sasan Seifi:
Who is the manager of cumin?
I am Dr. Sasan Seifi; I have been working in the field of advertising and marketing for nearly ten years, and of course I have also studied in this field. Previously, I worked as a consultant and presenter in advertising campaigns with large companies such as Naft Behran, Tekdane, Mobeen Net, etc.; Currently, we are at your service with the cumin startup.
Cumin, what an interesting name! What does this startup do?
Cumin startup is basically one of several services of Dr. Kermani’s collection, Dr. Kermani is quite famous in the field of diet and nutrition; The basis of cumin is also based on Dr. Kermani’s diet system. At Zira, we tried to act both intelligently and automatically in order to achieve physical fitness; In this way, cumin uses the mechanism of calorie counting, and its audience is those who are looking for weight loss and weight gain, or people who just want to maintain their fitness. Zeera application was released a little more than 850 days ago. This application is available on Myket, Bazaar and Google Play; The iOS version is also available on the web, and the native iOS version will be released this fall at the same time as version 6 of the application.
Why did you choose the name “Zira”?
Usually, when people hear the name of cumin, they think of burning calories and fat; The audience who enter this type of application are mostly looking for weight loss, that’s why “cumin” gives this feeling to the audience.
How many active installations did you have during the time the application was launched?
In total, we had more than 500,000 installations, but active users are more than 350,000. About 22 to 25 million users visit the application monthly.
Why has the cumin startup moved to “nutrition”?
According to the statistics mentioned by the Ministry of Health in one of the speeches, more than 50% of Iranian people have incorrect behavior in the field of nutrition and physical activity. This shows that the society has a great purpose. Now, if we exclude the 20% of this group who do not have health concerns; That 80% becomes a community of 35 million people who can be the target of health services.
In this regard, since the collection belongs to Dr. Kermani and they have been active in the topic of diet for years, they started to launch a separate application. In Zira, we intend to answer the needs of people who do not have the right food and activity patterns with all the experts and athletes; In other words, to become a “hub” for athletes and professionals to communicate with their contacts through Zira. “Health” is one of the main trends in the world, and this trend is taking shape in Iran as well. We also had good feedback and the growth rate we see in the application installation process is an acceptable growth rate.
How is the cumin revenue model?
The core of business in Zaira is free and everyone can use Zaira without any restrictions and many users use Zaira in the same way, but since it is a bit difficult to stick to the regimes and activities, we program We have included helpers in the premium version, such as advice, food reminders, etc., and this helps the user to stick to their plans. One of the services is that the user announces his meals to Zira.
Cumin also informs the user of the amount of calories consumed in each meal and helps him lose weight more. In addition, the cumin application encourages the user to comply with nutrients so that they do not face vitamin deficiency during the diet. Along with these features, we are adding artificial intelligence to the premium version so that we can study the user’s behavior so that the suggestions that the application gives to the user are similar to the user’s own behavior and habits.
Is artificial intelligence used in the cumin application or are nutrition experts working in it?
We are trying to move the system towards artificial intelligence; Of course, besides that, we plan to turn it into a hub for specialists so that users can be in contact with a real person and if they need a specialist, they can access it as well. Artificial intelligence also returns the user’s behavior to himself; You have probably noticed that the foods suggested in the diets are often a little different from the foods consumed by people, and cumin usually does not recommend these foods.
Because according to our experience in the diet market, more than 50% of the reason people fail in the diet is not that they cannot provide the food or perform that activity, but that they fail mentally, so psychological issues In this case, it is related to the behavior that is suggested to the user; Therefore, artificial intelligence brings the route closer to the user’s behavior and habits so that the user accepts it as one of their daily behaviors. Recently, we are going to add a suggestion system to the application, that is, if the user walks for example 10 minutes a day, the system will suggest that the user burn more calories with the same ten minutes of walking.
So, apart from nutrition, Cumin also focuses on the physical activity of users. It is true?
Yes. The changes in our weight are the result of the calories we get from food and the calories we lose through physical activity, and if the balance of these two calories is higher or lower than the body’s needs, we will gain or lose weight; Zireh also has a look at the sports activities section and in the sixth version, the sports activities section will be accompanied by education, and we will go in the direction of teaching users what to do if they refuse to go to the gym because of Corona or if the gym is closed. So keep yourself healthy and lose weight at home.
You mentioned Corona, what effect did Corona have on Zira’s business?
Maybe the corona pandemic followed 2 types of behavior; In the first type of behavior, everyone thought that it was a temporary illness. The next behavior was related to the reality of Corona and the prolongation of its duration. In the meantime, people who were always fit became overweight during the Corona period due to reduced activity and constant eating behavior. In this regard, we decided to interact with users so that they can continue their past activities at home or at work and burn extra calories. In this regard, we presented a number of programs such as yoga on Instagram and Aparat, and also published a series of practical content in the magazine.
What specialists are there in Zira?
We have two main departments which include technical department and marketing department. We use experts for each of these. In the technical part, since we were a holding company and there were other groups on the other side, we did team building very easily. But in the marketing department, we tried to select people and find our practical forces.
Especially when we were selecting nutritionists, we also invited volunteer experts because this group usually spends extra energy due to their high motivation; We invited people who like to produce content, education, sports, food, etc. so that they can present their knowledge in the application; In this regard, we also had good feedback. For example, we were able to organize a sushi day with one of the restaurateurs and a yoga day with one of the athletes, and such events are increasing in Zira and all of these are the energies of Zira fans.
Have other groups except mother holding supported Zira?
Until today, we only grew from the heart of the collection; But now we have reached a stage where we are looking for a third partner to be able to Create a big bang in our business; Because in our business plan, we are looking to increase our penetration rate in the market tenfold and Name it 10x we put And this tenfold should happen both in sales and in attracting the audience; Since this big step requires more effort, we are looking for an investor partner or smart money so that we can go this way better.
Have you ever needed a special license from the Ministry of Health or the Nutrition Association?
As a rule, we and all health businesses should use nutritionists in their system; Of course, 99% of the calorie counting system is based on a formula, but sometimes users do wrong behaviors that require an expert to fix it. In general, the online health sector and calorie counter activities such as digital currency businesses have not yet reached legal stability and are in a dark period, and it can be said that there is no law or no law.
Businesses can operate only with a medical system code, and the licenses they have are from the organization of computerized and related trade union affairs and have nothing to do with the Ministry of Health. Is there legislation in this section or not?
Does Zireh have a program for people who have special diseases such as celiac disease and diabetes and usually have a special diet?
In the current 5 versions, we tried as much as possible to emphasize to these people not to enter the cumin calorie counting mechanism; Because the calorie counting system defined in the application is not useful for this particular group. In the 6th version of Cumin, considering that the volume of diabetic contacts in the country is unfortunately high, we moved in this direction. Of course, 2 collections are specialized in this field in the country; We are also reaching a behaviorism for this group of society. In the new version of Zireh, it asks the users about their disease in order to provide the user with the appropriate mechanism for that disease.
What are the basic challenges faced by cumin?
If we skip the issues related to legislation, we had three challenging issues; First, the technological discussion is in line with the behavior of users, and at first we had a problem entering user information in the form of barcodes, and we are looking for a mechanism for this part. Another problem was the lack of a regular database that we entered a large number of these data manually and solved some of them with the help of the chain hypermarket connected to the product information. The third challenge we are currently facing is in the field of attracting capital so that we can develop ideas more easily.
Does Zira offer nutritional supplements in the form of pills, medicine, etc.?
no The application does not recommend any medicinal supplements; Only in the articles published by experts in the cumin magazine, the methods and times of consumption of these supplements are discussed.
What is the gender distribution of cumin audience? Do you see a jump in the volume of cumin audience in the future?
As a rule, it has more female audience; Currently, 72% of the audience is female and the rest is male. The behavior of the users who interact with us also shows that most of the users have an average and upward familiarity with the Internet. There are many people in the society who are concerned about health and counting calories and even smartphones, but after Corona, they have not yet moved to this direction, and that is because they are not familiar with the application and the Internet; But this statistical community will enter the technological field in the next few years and migrate from offline to online.
The ratio of people who use the platforms to people who do not use the application for their health is 20 to 80, so if 80% enter this sector, a big thing will happen in the market volume and all the activists in this field, and in terms of Within the next 3 years, 80% will enter this sector.
final word…
As a member of Zareh Startup, I wish that everyone can reach their ideal weight.
