Huofar Aims to Promote Healthy Living in China [INTERVIEW]

Huofar.com caught my eye as soon as I saw it. Now, I know what you’re thinking — why should anyone care about yet another social networking site in China’s uber-crowded market. But wait! This one is actually pretty cool.

The idea of the site is to promote healthy living, which — unlike another generic social network — is something that China actually needs. Plus, it’s got a cool name. Huofar (活法儿) means “Ways of Living” in Chinese, but if you pretend the “far” part is English, then it means “Living far” (i.e., living a long time), which is kind of cool too.

Also, it’s not really clear yet just how social this social networking site is actually going to be when it’s launched. The site is still in beta and closed without an invitation, and the team is currently focused mostly on spin-off apps like their upcoming iOS app.

1. How did you come up with the idea for Huofar?

As I get older, I gradually see more of life, death, and illness and the suffering that comes along with them. Everyone suffers. An illustration of this is how in China most people have large savings [rather than using credit or investing]. This is because people don’t have a sense of security, and people don’t have a sense of security because they fear for their health or that they won’t be provided for when they get old. We want to use a little power to change that. We personally don’t have a lot of power but the internet is a massive force. If we can use it properly, we have a chance to influence and change people’s lifestyles, and improve their health.

2. Can you tell us about the development and history of Huofar?

Our site has gone through four major overhauls. It started in 2009 as a site based on health management and Western nutritional science, but we discovered this required users to input too much every day, and not enough users were willing to do it. So we changed to a focus on lifestyles based on Chinese traditional nutritional beliefs. In February 2010 we launched a 60-question Chinese medicine survey (in accordance with national standards) for entering users, and through word-of-mouth began doing business. In half a year, we got over four million test results. Near the end of 2010, we started to get into Taobao, and now over eight million people have installed our Taobao application. We’ve been constantly adding awesome new people to the team. Recently we dug up a Wall Street investment deal modeling expert to design the algorithms for our personalization services. We started with three people on the team and have now grown to 15.

3. Can you describe the user experience?

Huofar’s service is entirely based in personalized design. We have used nutritional science and traditional Chinese nutrition data and edited it into a database. Our system can automatically provide personalized health recommendations, taking into account differences between people, times, and locations.

4. China has a lot of social networking sites; why should investors or users care about Huofar?