
What role can startups really play in human longevity?
From Disrupting Japan by Tim Romero
December 8, 2025 · 39 min · Episode 245
About this episode
The episode discusses the role of Japanese startups in the longevity market with Bilal Kharouni from Ekei Labs.
Japan has one of the longest lived and healthiest populations in the world, and let Japanese startups are playing a relatively small role in the recent longevity-tech boom. The longevity market includes everything from health-tech wearables, to foods and supplements, to lifestyle coaching, to invasive medical procedures. The offerings themselves range from the incredibly useful and helpful to the wasteful and the outright dangerous. To make sense of all this, today we talk with Bilal Kharouni the CEO of Ekei Labs, who explains his startup's pivots through multiple sectors of the budding longevity market. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes What exactly is “biological age” Where health tracking apps are useful and where they are dangerous How to market supplements in Japan's tightly regulated market The business and medical challenges in direct-to-consumer health tech Pivoting from supplements to consumer test kits to research The path for commercializing today's university medical research Business models that work for startups in medical research Advice to founders coming to Japan to start a startup How to sell in Japan with limited Japanese…
People in this episode
Host: Tim Romero
Guest: Bilal Kharouni
Topics covered
- longevity
- health-tech
- startups
- biological age
- consumer health
- Japan
Keywords
- longevity
- health-tech wearables
- supplements
- lifestyle coaching
- medical procedures
- biological age
- consumer test kits
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Ekei Labs
Places: Japan, Japan
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