Decode Age: Bringing Longevity To The Untapped International Market

The field of longevity only continues to grow. With funding rounds and research efforts ramping up, slowly but surely, the industry is beginning to detach itself from the broad world of biotech.

What’s not so obvious, however, is which companies and founders are blazing the path forward.

To help bridge this gap, Spannr will be occasionally interviewing founders in the space. Through these deep dives, we intend to help readers better understand the business models, the uphill battles – and even the science – behind some of today’s most ambitious longevity companies.

In our inaugural interview, we had the pleasure of speaking with Darshit Patel from Decode Age – an India-based longevity supplement, research, and testing company reporting 30% sales growth MoM.

How’d they get started? And what was their trick to such early success?

Continue reading to learn more.

Tell us about yourself and your company.

Hello, I am Darshit Patel, Founder and Chief Science Officer at Decode Age.

Decode Age is the first longevity-focused company dedicated to bringing science-based supplements and predictive tests to improve both healthspan and lifespan for the people of India.

We are integrating one “P” at a time in what we call the “P4 Approach” to battling aging in India. We started with Preventive solutions (P1), and are now building a community platform to spur Participation (P2), will soon launch Predictive tests (P3) and finally look for Personalized solutions (P4) for every individual to assist in their longevity journey.

Currently, our flagship products are longevity-focused supplements (NMN, Senolytics, AKG, amongst others), which we are uniquely offering in the country. We are also on the track to launch a Gut Microbiome predictory test that breaks the shackles of existing commercial technology (existing in India) by going a notch higher on the testing methodology.

Our current customers are typically in the age group of 35 to 60, facing early signs of aging, that are looking for novel solutions to extend their healthspan.

While we’re just getting started, with roughly only one year in the Indian market, we’ve had great traction converting people to Decode Age who previously depended on international companies selling supplements in India. That said, we are quite excited to launch our first research-based service through long-read and shotgun-based Gut Microbiome tests.

The cherry on top is that we were recognized by the Indian President’s Office early on and have been serving them our products ever since.

What’s your background, and what led you to develop Decode Age?

As an ardent and lifelong pursuer of biological sciences, I quickly learned that aging was the biggest problem in biology.

I arrived at this conclusion when I realized that aging is the only detrimental process experienced by every human being on the planet (unless it is Benjamin Button, we are talking about). That was it: a simple realization, followed by the book “The Telomere Effect”, and finally, a deep dive into the trajectory of existing research.

However, the question for myself was, what can I do, and how can I add value to the work already done by all the star scientists and entrepreneurs working in this field?

The answer to this question brought me back to my roots – India.

It was the start of the pandemic when I came back to India and got the perfect “hibernation” period during lockdowns to see what was happening in the country and what could be done. Luckily, to my surprise, India was completely unexposed to the latest science of aging research. Even the solutions available for people in other countries to help manage aging and related chronic ailments were virtually nonexistent in our country.

The scope was huge, the possibilities were endless, and I could already see the change this could bring to the nation’s demographics, economics, and healthcare (of course). To add to my luck was the fact that I found two people: Parth and Rakesh, who had the same versions of a similar vision, and it all aligned to introduce “Decode Age” to the world.

Credit: Spannr