Last August, 23 Rubik's Cube took the lead in lowering the price of consumer-grade genetic testing from 999 yuan to 499 yuan, which caused a shock in the industry. Forcing WeGene to lower the price. Less than a year later, on June 26 this year, 23 Rubik's Cube announced the price reduction again, and the price was halved to 299 yuan. ?

It is understood that this 299 yuan test product uses a chip customized by Shier of Thermo Fisher Scientific Shier Technology, which contains 800,000 SNP loci. The test contents include their ancestral origin, genetic risk, genetic traits, genetic variation, nutritional requirements, drug reactions, exercise and fitness, etc. 170.

Although compared with clinical products, most of the testing items of consumer goods are "irrelevant", it seems that the report data can be fabricated at will, but it is not.

On the one hand, it is easy to detect fraud: the same consumer only needs to send two samples of himself under a pseudonym to see if the results are consistent; Or send the family samples of yourself and your parents under different pseudonyms to see if the loci conform to Mendelian inheritance, and you can find out the flaws. The risk of discovering fraud is too high. As long as competitors send a few samples for testing, it will be destroyed in minutes.

On the other hand, the technical threshold of consumer-grade genetic testing is not high. If the cost control of each link in the product process is excellent, it is not completely impossible to reach such a low price. The company claims that it expects to reach a sample size of 500,000 people by the end of 18. I guess the purchasing cost of SNP+ array and reagent consumables will be greatly reduced under such an order of magnitude.

What's more, 23 Rubik's Cube can also provide all data downloads like WeGene, so I think the detection of this product is unlikely to be fake, and it should be true and reliable.

In the case that the test is not fake, 299 yuan can barely cover the test cost. Many people in the industry question why 23 Rubik's Cube doesn't want to make money and actively compresses the profit space to the limit.

Fu Sheng said that the previous business model was that wool was on sheep, but now it may be on pigs. Just like Xiaomi's greatest skill: if the visible part doesn't make money, it can make money in other ways.

"Wool comes from pigs" is a common strategy in the Internet industry (personally, 23 Rubik's Cube and WeGene are more like Internet companies in nature), which is generally divided into two steps:

1, find a market segment with general demand and obtain a large number of basic users with extremely aggressive prices (extremely free and subsidized).

2. After the number of basic users breaks through the critical point, the effect appears. At this time, income can be obtained by charging high-value users or finding a third party to pay the bill.

The wool is on the pig, which is actually an interesting summary of "Party A sells things, Party B buys things, and Party C grabs the bill". The most typical case is 360. In the past, the business model of mainstream antivirus software was to charge an annual fee, and 360 antivirus allowed users to use it permanently for free. 360' s strategy is to grab all users of other anti-virus software first, then install 360 secure browsers for them, and then charge advertisers.

In the same way, 23 Rubik's Cube probably doesn't intend to make hard money by to C's testing business, but first tries to seize the market by low price, and then makes money by to B's database business.

We can regard this price reduction as a large-scale acquisition of genetic data, aiming at accumulating the genetic database of millions of people in China. Such a database has great commercial and scientific value and will become the most valuable asset of the 23 Rubik's Cube. As long as you give users a little kindness, let them fill out forms on the APP and collect phenotypic information, you can do a cohort study of millions of people.

The possible business model of Rubik's Cube in the future is to charge fees and authorize data to scientific research institutions or pharmaceutical companies. For example, do GWAS, explore the correlation between genes and diseases such as tumors, screen out newly discovered susceptible sites, and conduct new drug research and development.

As an ordinary user, I am more concerned about the user privacy and data security behind the genetic testing service. There are two dimensions of data security here: one is the attack of external biological hackers, which has the risk of data leakage; One is the abuse of internal data, how to prevent genetic testing service providers from applying my data to business or scientific research without my authorization.

First of all, this testing service is best registered anonymously; Secondly, in the case that the tester is not authorized to use the data, I suggest that when filling out the form, it is better to fill out the form blindly without writing the truth. If the tester keeps his promise and does not use our data, it will naturally have no impact; If you secretly use unauthorized data, being misled is self-inflicted.

The Rubik's Cube's price of 299 yuan has a considerable impact on the consumer-grade genetic testing industry. WeGene is not the first to bear the brunt, but companies that do various individual genetic testing services.

Take the common skin beauty gene detection and slimming gene detection in Xiaohong's book as an example. The detection range of such products is only a few to dozens of sites, and the price may be more expensive than 299. And 23 Rubik's Cube has 800,000 sites. For example, ordering a hamburger in a store costs 17 yuan; In another store, order a whole family bucket 15 yuan, which contains hamburgers, chicken wings, French fries and egg tarts. What do you choose?

At present, domestic consumer gene testing can be regarded as OEM sequencing of SNP+array (or other testing technology platforms) to a large extent. After directly measuring the information of SNP, most of the interpretation reports can be issued without letter generation algorithm.

There is almost no technical content except that ancestor analysis requires a proprietary algorithm. Many companies' genetic testing is equivalent to earning the difference in OEM sequencing. As the Rubik's Cube keeps pushing down the terminal price, once the price war starts, the profit of OEM sequencing will become thinner and thinner.

Therefore, companies whose samples don't match the price may wish to give up the OEM sequencing method as soon as possible, calm down and polish the algorithm, and work hard on personalized interpretation. Instead of making money by sequencing, making money by algorithms and explanations, the real barrier in the future is explanation. This is the correct way of thinking.

Finally, I give a suggestion to the company that does single gene testing service. If I were you, I would enlarge the pattern, regard 23 Rubik's Cube Company as my own sequencing factory, and simply support users to upload their own genetic data, which will be measured by 23andme, WeGene, 23 Rubik's Cube and other companies.

For example, after users upload data, they only need to pay 20 yuan to generate a professional report on skin care gene testing. On the one hand, realize light assets and pure profits; On the other hand, other databases can be accumulated without sequencing.