Hila, Kobi Bentovski's middle daughter was seven years old when she suffered from urinary tract infections. "That means doctors, hotline, antibiotics, I also remember an emergency room once, urine and blood tests for the girl, and it didn't stop, it went on and off for almost two years," he says. "During one of our meetings with doctors, one of them advised my wife to go to a pediatric kidney specialist, a nephrologist. My wife searched and found the specialist in the central area, and made an appointment with him in advance.
"We waited two months to see him. On the appointed day we stood at the door of the doctor's room, my wife, myself and Hila, and even before we entered the doctor looked at us and asked, 'Why did you come?' We answered while standing at the door that the girl had an infection. He looked at her and said, 'The girl doesn't drink.' the skin of the face, the dryness of the lips."
The family sat down in the doctor's room, who explained to them what happened, but Bentowski does not remember the meeting. All he thought to himself was: How could this be? "I am a technological person and today, thanks to technology, we know everything. We know where our friends go out, where they ate, where they spent time, but we do not know about our bodies, about our children, about ourselves, the most basic thing: are we and the children Ours drink."
Is this how the smart bottle was born?
"The smart bottle was born when the doctor suggested adding probiotics to Hila's morning drink, thinking that it would strengthen the entire immune system. I wondered if he had ever seen three girls getting ready in the morning, when one was getting dressed, the second was shouting, the third couldn't find the pencil, so at that point it seemed to me It is irrational to add probiotics to Hila's breakfast."
Kobi Bentovsky (Photo: Impex)Israel is drying up
The family returned home and Bantovsky did not fall asleep. "I spent that night searching the internet on the whole issue of dehydration and discovered that 60% of the population is dehydrated to one degree or another. Some are more dehydrated and some are less dehydrated. Men are more dehydrated, also because they drink more coffee than women, especially black coffee which is very diuretic. In our daily activities we remember how much coffee we drank, but we don't remember how much water we drank and usually we remember water either when we have a headache or at the end of the day."
The first phone call the next morning was to his neighbor, Nimrod Kaplan, that both of their children go to the same class together. "Nimrod is among the authorities I have known in Israel on the whole subject of applications and big data. I told him that we had to meet. We always met at one or another event and said we would do something together at a certain point in life. I told him the story and we drew things on a napkin. Nimrod asked me to let him think. The next day he called and said which is a big and interesting problem and suggested that we do something."
The next phone call was to Yoav Hoshan, whom Bentovsky knew from their joint service in the army, in unit 8200. "Yoav is among the greatest experts in Israel who know how to take start-up technologies and sell them to the largest companies in the world." After the three met several times, they decided to go out together and start a company. It happened just a few months after that visit to the nephrologist, and then Impex was born.
Impex, a technology company that specializes in digital health, currently has 150 different patents, developments and a user community that keeps growing as part of the drinking trend that conquers the Israeli market especially towards the summer, where new heat records are broken every year. Their strongest brand and product is WATER.IO and Bentovsky explains that IO signifies the field of technology.
"The idea is to take the water and turn it into something technological. One of the first things we did was to take the field of drinking water and turn it into a measure and one that allows people an immediate and personal, personal health improvement. We make it possible to adjust a personal drinking profile for everyone according to their needs."
The company's first customer a few months after its founding was Eden Water, which launched a campaign with the "Eden Water Smart Stopper" product.
"It was four years ago and our first generation product, which went on the market in hundreds of thousands of units in sixes of Eden water and reminded people to drink. We as a company started running to the international market, we signed deals with Danon Global, Danon Water, the world's number two producer of mineral water bottles, of brands French companies such as Evian, with whom we did the second generation, which includes an app and personalization of the drink, customization for everyone and we developed additional products such as in the field of vitamins. Here too we reminded people to use and consume according to their parameters."
global hack
The big breakthrough came right after the corona virus, a period of time in which the world realized that the whole issue of health and maintaining a healthy lifestyle and our wellness does not allow for one product that suits everyone. A bit like the increasingly pervasive understanding in Western society of gender medicine.
In September 2021, Impex became a large Israeli company traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Less than a year and a half ago, Impex signed a commercial agreement in the amount of 2.7 million dollars with PepsiCo Global, under which it supplies hundreds of thousands of electronic units of smart beverage bottles and a software development kit to the global beverage corporation. Impex manufactures smart water bottles for the Gatorade brand, PepsiCo's isotonic drink sold worldwide.
"The products we sell are ones that we all use and buy, and we wanted to make it accessible to customers who use the product and also invest in our shares within the stock exchange. Later we launched our own brand. Until then we sold the products displayed to customers and brands, but in Israel we launched for the first time the smart water bottle under the branding of the company WATER .IO to the local market. We have brought to the Israeli market all the technologies that until today have been sold to international companies as a product that is adapted to the daily needs of the Israeli market."
The company produces tens of thousands of bottles for personal use per year. The cost of the bottle was initially NIS 299 and today a bottle costs NIS 269. "The price of the product at the launch at the beginning of commercial sales was more expensive and we adjusted it to the appropriate price level for the Israeli market."
The technology consists of two basic elements: the app and the bottle. The application allows you to enter all the personal and physical details of the user, including height, age, weight, gender, and knows how to connect to smart watches, knows if we did sports today, how many steps we walked, and if allowed, the application also knows according to our location, to update the drinking According to the weather forecast. The application builds us a personal drinking profile according to all our personal parameters and updates the bottle.
The bottle itself is made of stainless steel with a ceramic inner coating that allows both ease of cleaning and prevention of the metallic taste that metal bottles usually have (clean it manually with soap and water without using a dishwasher). Inside the cap of the product is concentrated the technology that is protected by patents, and it allows transferring the personal drinking profile from the application and during the day accompanies the users.
Every time you drink from the bottle or fill it up, the cap with the brain inside it tracks the amounts of drinking and filling of the bottle. The cork has the ability to remind us to drink with lights on its top and through vibration. Every movement or taking of the bottle shows us the state of our drinking. If it flashes orange, we are not meeting the target and if it flashes green, we are within the target.
Above expectations
Levantovsky (50) has experience in business entrepreneurship based on inventions. In 2005, he founded the MTEYE company that dealt in smart home and security and invented the field of home cameras that can be monitored using a cell phone. The company was sold in 2012 to the largest alarm company in Israel, Fima, which integrated it into the wireless division. Bentovsky moved to Pima and managed the division for four years until he founded Impex.
"The effect of the product on the market was far beyond our expectations," Bentovsky admits. "The expectations were for a low sales rate, at the level of dozens. We thought of releasing a product with unconventional standard marketing for start-up companies. This is considered challenging. To say that the product was successful, one of the significant indicators is to bring the business unit of B TO C products to the break even point. The indicator The second significant one is how much the customers like the product and we conduct surveys to find out. We ask a simple question: would you recommend someone close to you to purchase the product? We feel that we have almost cracked that."
Why only almost?
"Because the rate of recommendations from our customers increases day by day and we see our referrals, our referrals, and the customers say I bought for my wife, a friend, a relative."
Your daughter had a urinary tract infection, but there is no baby bottle.
"The product is a digital health product that incorporates a lot of technology into it, and we incorporate the best of technology both in terms of batteries, communication, and the ability to measure, and this makes us reach a certain price tag that still does not meet the criteria for products for children. But we will get there."
A community has formed around the product, Bentovsky says. "There are people who drink 200% of the recommended amount and we have seen that they have exceeded the target in large quantities, therefore we are perfecting and adding a personal advisor who, as soon as they exceed drinking water in very large quantities, will accompany, warn, and ask why this is so."
Among the communities that have developed around the bottle you can find people who want to lose weight. Drinking water at least in the daily target helps to feel less hungry and gives a feeling of satiety, which after a period leads to weight loss. "There are groups of pregnant women, groups of lactating women for whom the issue of drinking is important, people who received an unequivocal instruction from the doctor to start drinking water. At the societal level, we develop the communities for meetings.
"We have beta groups who volunteered to receive the first updates and we have a group of 'super users' who frequently reach the daily goal in sequences of weeks and months. They come to meetings with us, receive updates about the product, what things need to change and also innovations and receive lectures on health issues. The last time we did it in our offices in the Science Park in Rehovot and we reached the peak of occupancy, 50 people, but the next meetings will be opened to the general public in larger places because the communities are growing."
What is your goal?
"Our goal is to become the largest digital health company in the world. Today our competitors are those that include water bottles that measure water temperature or weight. We are focused on the personal health of users. We are not the only ones in the world that have a drinking application, but the only ones that take very specific parameters As with pregnancy, we update profiles according to weight loss, medical conditions, and build an environment of very significant health promotion."
What are the expected innovations?
"The innovation is in the development of the water products when we add content to them and the ability to make each of us reach the goal. The magic happens when you start reaching the goal. You feel sharper, people lose weight, people report that their diabetes indicators have decreased, people are less tired."
Is Hila already drinking?
"Drinks also drinks".
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