The most frustrating moment for pet owners comes when they notice "warning signs." It is not easy to judge whether to change the food, visit the hospital, or reduce walks. Online communities overflow with anecdotes, but the information is fragmented and varies in reliability.
The startup that emerged to solve these problems is "EFIL." Founded in 2018, EFIL operates customized food recommendations, health information, consultation services, and premium pet food commerce, centered on its pet care platform "Meongnyangbogam." The company is expanding its business into AI-based pet healthcare services using accumulated consultation data.
Lee Kyung-joon, CEO of EFIL, met with Seoul Economic Daily at his office in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, on Wednesday. "Pets cannot directly say where they feel uncomfortable," he said. "Understanding the context of the questions owners ask and connecting them to the right answers is the core of pet healthcare."
EFIL is a company started by four developers from Netmarble (251270). In its early days, it tried various services such as price comparison and data analysis. The catalyst for fully entering the pet market was information asymmetry. Its first service was food ingredient analysis. When an owner enters the name of a food product, the service analyzes its ingredients and nutritional components.
The area the company has invested the most effort in is securing and analyzing consultation data. For example, when an owner uploads a pet's symptoms, blood test results, or X-ray images, the AI analyzes the context of the question and connects it with veterinary data. When necessary, a veterinarian reviews the final answer. Park Woo-seok, head of big data at EFIL, said, "It is not the case that all dogs shedding tears have a single cause." He added, "It could be due to pressure between the eyes and nose, but many people assume it is an allergy and make the mistake of changing the food." He continued, "In such cases, it is important to provide answers through large-scale data analysis."
The meaningful consultation data EFIL secured last year amounted to 12,000 cases. The distinguishing feature is that this is high-density data containing both the pet's condition and the owner's concerns, rather than simple inquiry counts. From the second half of this year, the company plans to fully expand its AI services and continuously secure more than 30,000 to 40,000 high-density data cases annually. CEO Lee stressed, "In the AI era, anyone can ask ChatGPT or Gemini, but answers related to pets are often inaccurate." He added, "Building proprietary data assets that commercial AI services do not have is our survival strategy."
The way commerce is operated is also data-centric. Unlike ordinary commerce companies, EFIL does not employ many brand managers (BM) or merchandisers (MD). It has automated much of the product sourcing, recommendation, and consultation processes. Lee said, "I wanted to avoid a structure where costs grow as revenue grows." He added, "My goal is to build a company that can be operated with around 25 employees even when revenue exceeds 100 billion won."
Thanks to expanding its commerce business in areas such as pet food, profitability is also improving. EFIL recorded revenue of 8.3 billion won and operating profit of 1.4 billion won last year. This year, it targets revenue of 12 billion won and an operating margin of more than 22%. Since last year, it has effectively cut marketing costs aimed at attracting users. The strategy is to focus on accumulating consultation data and purchase data rather than on short-term revenue expansion.
This year, the company is also preparing to launch a premium private brand (PB) pet food. Lee said, "We did not create a PB from the start, but learned the market through purchasing and selling." He added, "I believe the right order is to release products after confirming what owners actually want."
EFIL's next goal is a pet healthcare platform beyond commerce. It is also preparing a service that links with pharmacies to provide price information on pet medicines and support reservation purchases. The company is also keeping open the possibility of future hospital reservations, insurance, and collaboration with bio companies.
Lee said, "EFIL makes money through commerce, but its essence is becoming the company that best understands pets' behavior and changes through data." He added, "Even if we are small, I want to grow solidly and become the most unique service in the pet healthcare market."
