 "Three dads bring clean air to China on the cheap")
If you want to breathe healthily in China, there are a suite of items to get your hands on. Firstly, an air quality app (free). Next, a cheap basic mask that will cost you no more than a few US dollars per disposable mask. Then, a high-quality home air purifier. Expect to shell out hundreds, or even thousands of dollars for this one. Can you guess which of those items is most primed for disruption?
The Shanghai-based start-up Mila has its sights set on the indoor air purifier market, where it’s aiming to leverage sleek design, smart features, and a unique business model to gain an advantage over competitors.
The company also has another trick up its sleeve: a founding team of concerned dads.
The three dads— Grant Prigge, Charles Liao and David Chitayat—were eager to improve the quality of air that they and their families were breathing.
Making a good purifier isn’t rocket science. All you need is a HEPA filter (the high-quality filters that capture even the smallest toxic particles) and a fan to pull air through it.
But reality is more complicated. Sites like Taobao overflow with cheap air purifier devices that claim “HEPA-like” performance but skimp out on the filters themselves. On the other end of the scale lay eye-wateringly expensive devices as big as refrigerators.
The folks at Mila believe they’ve found a way to crack the air purifier dilemma: a subscription model. Instead of buying several expensive purifiers at once, and then – if you remember – buying new filters every few months, the entire process is reduced to a monthly fee.
This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.
