Korea's LifeSemantics establishes health functional food subsidiary

Digital healthcare company LifeSemantics Co. has entered the health functional food business by creating a new subsidiary, NutraSemantics.

The South Korean company said on Thursday that it invested 2 billion won ($1.5 million) in cash to establish the subsidiary and appointed Lee Byung-ju, former vice president of Health Balance, as its CEO.

Lee has extensive experience in health functional food R&D and production, brand marketing and sales at companies such as Dongwon Group, KT&G Group, and Genesis BBQ Group. He played a crucial role in the sale of Health Balance to TPG Inc., a top-five global private equity fund, for 280 billion won ($215 million).

LifeSemantics currently uses its personal health record (PHR) platform, "Life Record," to develop digital healthcare services, including Redpill Breath for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) treatment, Dr. Call for contactless treatment and H.AI for AI-based disease prediction solutions.

"In the past ten years, both the IT and nutrition industries have made great progress in their respective fields, but it is hard to find a case in which the food industry and advanced digital healthcare have been successfully combined. We will do our best to combine the food industry and advanced digital healthcare successfully," said Lee Byung-ju, CEO of NutraSemantics.

Write to Jiyoon Yang at yang@hankyung.com