"In our lives, sight and hearing have already been digitized. The last remaining sense is "smell.""
DeepScent is a Start - Up that handles fragrance as data. Chief Executive Kwon Il-bong(photo), who built a technology career at global corporations and completed an MBA program in the United Kingdom, founded the company in 2018.
Kwon said, "I decided to start a business to focus on the process of life," and noted, "While looking for a field where we could create social value with IT-AI-bio convergence capabilities, I focused on "fragrance."" From a young age, Kwon was interested in smell and fragrance and realized that even in an era when technology is evolving rapidly, the sense of smell still remains in an analog state.
Kwon said, "Visual content has continued to evolve with Netflix, and audio content with Spotify," adding, "But fragrance still exists as oil in a bottle. The digital transformation of this domain was truly a blue ocean."
The world DeepScent is building is one where, instead of spraying perfume or plugging in a diffuser, a smartphone app composes "a scent that fits my mood right now." It operates on two platforms: the personalized service FOD (Fragrance on Demand) and the space-customized FaaS (Fragrance as a Service).
FOD provides a customized scent in real time according to the user's time, place, mood, and purpose. When a user selects or receives a recommended recipe in the app, the device immediately synthesizes and emits the scent. The type and concentration of the scent can also be adjusted.
It embodies Kwon's philosophy that "it is not people who fit the scent, but the scent that fits people." FaaS is an integrated indoor scent control system for B2B spaces such as hotels, resorts, hospitals, and offices. It detects air quality and people's movement patterns in a space to automatically disperse an appropriate scent, and the entire building can be centrally controlled.
Recently, collaboration proposals have also been coming in from real estate developers and smart office service corporations.
"Research shows that products in spaces that smell good are perceived as more expensive, and people stay longer. Scent is "invisible branding.""
DeepScent is evolving beyond a company that simply makes fragrance products into a digital olfactory healthcare corporation. It is currently researching digital therapeutic solutions to improve sleep disorders, stress, and depression together with a national university hospital, KAIST, and the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB).
Kwon emphasized, "We do not view fragrance as a simple consumer good," adding, "Because olfactory stimulation acts directly on the brain's emotion and memory centers, it has high medical value."
Kwon explained, "DeepScent's digital olfactory solutions analyze the olfactory environment—including fragrance, odors, and air hygiene—as data and fuse it with bio and AI technologies to expand into smart homes, the Metaverse, and healthcare."
Korea's fragrance market is about 3 trillion won, and the global home fragrance market is 9 trillion won. DeepScent has set plans to expand into the 49 trillion won sleep market and the 121 trillion won mental wellness market.
DeepScent has secured five core technologies: AI-based fragrance databases, research on plant-derived natural substances, development of active aromatic pharmacological ingredients, and digital biomarker algorithms. To date, more than 50 intellectual property rights have been registered and filed.
DeepScent is also preparing to enter the global market, starting with Japan. Kwon said, "There were countless trials and errors until we established ourselves as a leading corporation in the unfamiliar field of digital olfactory services," adding, "But this time will ultimately become an asset that creates unrivaled competitiveness in the global market."