Intelligent Design

Donald Frazier, 10.09.09, 09:20 AM EDT
Forbes Asia Magazine dated October 19, 2009

A Hong Kong startup aims to save lives, either with cigarette filters or face masks to fight flu.

Activist and entrepreneur: Melissa Mowbray-d'Arbela in decontamination chamber at the Filligent lab in Hong Kong.

Wheezing and gagging, the biotech executive was trying to learn how to smoke. Not for fun, not to fit in with friends. No, this was serious research into why people around the world can so love a product that kills more than 5 million of them a year. Her goal: not to get them to quit but to keep them alive while they continue to smoke.
 

If Melissa Mowbray-d'Arbela succeeds, her eight-year-old Hong Kong startup, Filligent, could be a big winner. The company--armed with an investment from Goldman Sachs--has developed a filter that makes cigarettes less dangerous by blocking many of the carcinogens. It's begun rolling it out in Asia and elsewhere. But the business model depends on many things turning out right: that it can persuade the world's secretive cigarette companies to give its new filter a try. That its new-fangled technology--something called "intelligent filtration"--holds up in the marketplace as well as it does in the laboratory. That ordinary smokers around the world will eventually start demanding the filters.

Most of all, Filligent's success depends on cofounder and Chief Executive Mowbray-d'Arbela, a lawyer and venture capitalist with the tailored profile of a fashion editor and a penchant for social activism. The prize: a chunk of the world's $9-billion-a-year market for filters.
 

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HONG KONG AIR POLLUTION INDEX

Current Air Pollution Index: General Stations 12 to 31; Roadside Stations 44 to 59
Forecast for Tonight and Tomorrow's Air Pulloution Index: General Station 10 to 40; Roadside Station 45 to 65