Backed by the belief that it will emerge to be one of the most trusted brands in natural health products, Herbalogi Sdn.Bhd. operations is boosted with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine that designs products to allay symptoms and problems.
Herbalogi.ai – comprising scientists from various fields – states it is the only company using an AI engine – Ligand-Protein Repurposing Discovery and Search Engine (LPROSE) – that has been trained to accurately suggest medicinal plant extracts for health problems. The feature presents Herbalogi.ai with an advantage over others in the market in terms of developing medicines to solve diseases that have been harder to address.
“Hopefully this can translate into higher brand trust from the consumer. We believe that our niche capability can disrupt the natural health product market which is plagued with benefits overclaim, dubious scientific credentials, and prohibited substance contamination,” said Herbalogi.ai co-founder EUR ING Dr. Azam Che Idris.
Currently, the firm’s business model reaches their future target market – the end user and consumers – via collaboration with other pharmaceutical brands.
“By the first quarter of next year, we aim to launch our own line of health products. We are confident that we will gain the trust of the market seeing that Herbalogi.ai is also supported by a strong network of international experts in the health science field,” states Dr. Gary Chow, who is also a co-founder.
Both Dr. Azam and Dr. Chow project a target revenue of RM2 million by the end of 2023 in terms of combined income which includes sales, licensing and fees.
Established by a group of scientists from different backgrounds, Herbalogi.ai was formed after an academic workshop in 2020. The group had gotten to know each other further when they collaborated on various research projects.
“We are united by our passion in health science and we are excited at thinking about how AI can help guide its direction in the near future. In 2022, we decided to form a commercial establishment as the front face of our group to consolidate our direction and focus on the development of our core AI engine,” Dr. Azam said, adding that more information can be found on Herbalogi.ai’s website, https://herbalogi.ai/.
A tech professional with three chartered accreditation qualifications, Dr. Azam was originally trained as a rocket scientist. He changed his research interest to the machine learning field before venturing into computational drug design.
Dr. Azam said initially, Herbalogi.ai largely provided consultation services to biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Clients, he added, often enquired about chemical ligands or natural extracts and how they can benefit specific symptoms.
“In essence, we help our clients create or design their health products,” the Europe-based digital professional Dr. Chow chips in. Dr. Chow currently provides blockchain technology solutions for the fintech industry and was involved with various Software-as-a-Service tech ventures, previously.
Together, Herbalogi’s founding members are hopeful that the company’s first steps into the market will be successful. “We decided to venture into designing our own health products recently, after identifying under-served or unbeatable health problems that have not been addressed before. For example, we are currently focusing on post-covid sicknesses and symptoms. Herbalogi sees this as a huge scientific challenge and if we can solve it, the rewards will be immense,” Dr. Azam adds.
Herbalogi.ai is aided by seed funding from a private angel investor based in Qatar. Investments into its operations are also from an initial financial guarantee from its founding members. It hopes to secure Series A funding in order to expand the firm’s market reach.
