Shivom CEO, Axel Schumacher and Chief Innovation Officer, Henry Ines discuss the company's initial coin offering (ICO) and its genomic and health data hub that uses blockchain, DNA sequencing, artificial intelligence and cryptography to personalise medicine.
Jessica Amir: Hi I’m Jessica Amir for the Finance News Network joined by Shivom CEO and co-founder, Axel Schumacher and Henry Ines, the Chief Innovation Officer of the firm. Gentlemen, welcome.
Axel Schumacher: Thank you.
Henry Ines: Thank you very much.
Jessica Amir: First up, just give us an introduction to Shivom.
Axel Schumacher: Shivom is a precision medicine companywe are a start-up. We are based globally around the planet and we form a huge healthcare ecosystem. At the beginning, we are focusing our efforts on genomics and precision medicine, meaning we build the largest genomics and healthcare data hub on the planet. To do this, we work with hospitals and partners from the pharmaceutical industry, and patient support groups all around the planet, to build a huge community of people that want to revolutionise healthcare.
Jessica Amir: Who’s been supporting Shivom to this point?
Henry Ines: This is a great time right now in terms of healthcare innovation. And we are specifically looking to work in markets where, for example, governments are very progressive when it comes to the future of healthcare and technology, and specifically genomics. So one of the markets that we’re very much focused on right now is Australia. We have a great amount of support here. We’re working with DigitalX, which is helping us identify great partners and investors. And we also recently announced our strategic alliance with GTG Lab, which is an Nasdaq listed lab. And we’re going to be working very closely with them through our genomics data, to help predict and identify possible patients who might be suffering from breast cancer.
So in addition to Australia, we’re also working very closely with the Andhra Pradesh Government right now. We have a great opportunity to help a lot of the local citizens,we’ve given them access to healthcare. And so we’re going to work with the Government to potence a sequence of millions of local citizens in India, and through genomicsequencing, hopefully provide them access to new healthcare resources.
Jessica Amir: Now to the ICO itself, how much are you looking to raise and what stage are you at?
Henry Ines: We’re focused right now on raising about 75,000 Ether, which is equivalent to in today’s market, roughly about $65 million. So a big part of our effort right now is focused on the private sale, which is about roughly 65,000 Ether. So once we’ve completed the private sale, we will then be moving on towards conducting our ICO, which we anticipate will be in about mid April.
Jessica Amir: Now to the coin itself, how will it be used?
Axel Schumacher: A lot of opportunities where people can use the tokens on our platform. One is you can get your genome sequenced. There we have several opportunities, you can have what we call exome sequencing. This is just sequencing part of your genome, or you can get the whole genome sequence. This is where we, as an innovative company, want to go in the future. There are a lot of apps you can access over our platform. And all these services that are usually coming from service providers, or from us, that can be directly accessed over the platform with those tokens.
Jessica Amir: And where will the proceeds be going?
Axel Schumacher: Proceeds of our ICO will go in primarily business development all around the planet, because we want to be everywhere. We will build a huge massive ecosystem for healthcare, that means we will have to invest heavily in marketing. We have to build our own labs. We’re aiming at having at least one laboratory for genomic sequencingon each continent. In addition, we will build a huge network of genetic counsellors that help people really understand and interpret their genomes. To help them manage their health and wellness.
Jessica Amir: A more general question now, there’s thousands of ICO projects on the market, all with varying levels of risk. But why is Shivom so unique?
Henry Ines: With ICOs and really any early stage start-up enterprise, there are so many risks associated with the project, so many different reasons why a project may fail. So it’s important for any investor to look at key aspects of the project. The team, what is the use case, why is blockchain necessary for this particular project, and really look around the overall viability. This is where we think that Shivom really shines. We have an amazing team that’s focused on executing this project, in terms of ushering in the era of future healthcare and precision medicine. And we’re also working with amazing partners, best of the technologies and various protocols to make sure that our platform is completely secure. And that data privacy is the utmost importance.
Jessica Amir: What’s the size of the market opportunity?
Axel Schumacher: The market size is actually huge, because we are really working all over the planet to build a large healthcare ecosystem. So this is a trillion dollar market. Part of this is the genomics and precision medicine market, which alone is over $112 billion worth. In addition, it’s important to note that genomic sequencing will become absolutely widespread. We can expect that in the future not far ahead, like in two or three years, every hospital will offer genetic services. At some point every human being on the planet will be sequenced, at least in the developed countries. This will be a normal thing to do. And we at Shivom, we’re now at the point where we’re really at the forefront of the technology, bringing together genomics, blockchain technology, artificial intelligence and modern cryptographic methods to put everything together, to build the most sophisticated platform on the planet.
Jessica Amir: Last question now. What can participants expect over 2018 and longer term?
Axel Schumacher: At first we have to finalise our core platform. After that we will start our first sequencing projects. We have the one pilot project in India, where we work together with local hospitals to find individuals that are good to incorporate in our projects for rare diseases. Or to sequence ethnic sub-groups that need to be incorporated, in modern day precision medicine databases.
Jessica Amir: Axel Schumacher, Henry Ines, thanks so much for your time and good luck with the raising.
Henry Ines: Thank you so much.
Axel Schumacher: Thanks for having us.
Ends
