INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Atolla, a skin care startup that got its roots at MIT, is launching a Kickstarter campaign to help people achieve their skin goals
Atolla uses machine learning to identify skin health issues and then recommend the right skin care products based on what affects your
skin.
Atolla comes as a monthly subscription, with the idea being that you test your skin every month to see how it changes depending on the
The kit allows you to test for oil, moisture and pH
Every month, you receive a customized product based on the data extrapolated from your skin.
&So we&re thinking that if we do this
measurement for people like just once a month, after about a year we can start to predict how their skin&s going to change,& Atolla
co-founder Meghan Maulpin told TechCrunch
&It like,we know that your skin getsthis percent dryer in the winter so before you actually have the issue of super dryskin,we already know
that you need to use something that&s like this.&
Testing your skin takes just about 10 minutes (I tried it) and is pretty straightforward,
thanks to on-screen directions from Atolla mobile app.
Atolla vision is to build a longitudinal data set that looks at skin concerns across
demographics, geographies and lifestyles
Atolla use two distinct machine learning models
The first is to create skin archetypes based on all the factors that may affect someone skin, and the second is to predict how someone skin
may change.
&What we&re really trying to build is a database that represents all different types of like skin attributes, and understand
what the actual skin types are,& Maulpin told TechCrunch
&So it not just about like, number of data, it also diversity.&
Maulpin and her co-founder Sid Salvi met at MIT while in graduate school
Following acceptance into MIT Delta V accelerator for students, the two opened a handful of pop-up shops in New York City
Fast-forward to today, and Atolla is gearing up to start shipping to consumers in February.
