Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by WellTech.
Who doesn’t like to stay fit? Moreover, in the past few years, the significance of health and fitness has increased to a great extent. You would find every other person talking about fitness and following a number of health apps on their smartphones.
Every person is conscious of reducing those extra kilos to look better and stay in shape. It can be seen that fitness and health have become a hot topic of discussion but, just like starting anything new, you need to have a certain goal or a plan beforehand. Similarly, to embark on the journey to fitness and health you need to know the appropriate measures to start a healthy life.
Every other day, you find there’s an app related to health and fitness, in which you can get a customized plan designed to cater to your health needs. WellTech is one such IT startup company that develops mobile applications related to health and fitness.
Here’s the success story of WellTech, where you can learn everything about WellTech, its story, and team, products and services, competitors, and more.
WellTech is a private corporation, which focuses on information technology and services. The company mostly creates mobile applications for the health and fitness sector.
WellTech presently has over 200 million downloads worldwide. There are more than 400 people on the team who are dedicated to creating products to make millions of people feel better.
The company is dedicated to enhancing the health of numerous people worldwide. WellTech’s philosophy and ideals make it very evident that they aim for excellence in everything they do.
It is a data-driven company.
WellTech – Industry
It can be assured that the IT industry is one of the leading industries in the world. It is estimated that the projected spending for the worldwide information technology (IT) sector in 2022 is 5.3 trillion dollars.
In the market for IT services, the average Spend per Employee is anticipated to reach US$322.30 in 2022.
WellTech – Mission and Vision
WellTech’s mission is, “Improving the Health of Millions of People around the World”
WellTech – Name, Logo, and Tagline
WellTech logo is like a half circle full black in colour.
WellTech Logo
WellTech – Business Model
WellTech has created health & fitness applications like Omo, FitCoach, WalkFit, Yoga Go, and Muscle Booster.
Let’s a take detailed look into the following five applications:
Omo
Omo is the all-in-one weight loss application. It is a calorie-counting software that makes it simpler than ever to register your meals, keep track of your activities, and view your progress. It is not only about losing weight but the app gives a lot more than this.
It is more than just a food journal; it also provides its users with nutrition advice so they may eat well. Users can learn how to choose healthier foods and steer clear of junk food with the help of these suggestions, making it simpler to withstand cravings and establish lasting healthy habits.
Omo also helps users with intermittent fasting and gives a personalised workout plan.
How to use the app?
Users can need to go to the App Store or Google Play Store (depending on your device) and download the Omo App to get started. After it is downloaded, create an account to get started, by responding to a few straightforward questions in order for the app to develop a plan that is unique to you and your requirements.
Users’ weight loss plans will be computed when they have completed the questionnaire. Once done, Omo develops a highly customised weight loss plan rather than a generic one, making sure that its users won’t have any trouble adhering to it.
Yoga Go
Yoga Go by WellTech lets customise yoga and pilates routines to improve customers’ physical health, emotional stability, and overall well-being.
The app already has 23 million plus downloads and is available in 11 languages. Yoga-Go offers quick, at-home yoga and pilates routines that customers can use at any time they want. Yoga-Go workouts only last 7 to 30 minutes, and each session might result in a 200-calorie calorie burn.
With this app, users can enjoy a variety of yoga exercises:
Pilates
Face Yoga
Breathing Practices
Stretching
Yoga at the Office
Morning Yoga Practices
High-Intensity Yoga
Relaxing Yoga Practices
FitCoach
FitCoach has over 29 million downloads and is available in 13 languages. WellTech’s FitCoach is the perfect fitness app for those who are concerned about their health, want to get fit, and lose weight, but lack the time to go to the gym. The best part about this app is it offers a fully customised plan for its users.
FitCoach app offers the following variety of workouts:
Strength
Stretching
7 Minutes workouts
Yoga
Walking
Pilates helps
Cardio
Libido Boost
Recovery workouts
Morning
Fitness Mix
Muscle Booster
With over 60 million downloads, Muscle Booster by WellTech aims at offering daily plans for the overall body workout.
The app has a weekly calendar that is located at the top. Users have to select a day in the calendar, which will display options for both the main workout and extra workouts.
The main workout (if there is one that day) should be completed at the very least, but putting in the extra session will yield faster results. The exercise plan pages in the app list the exercises that will be done during the workout and how long it will take to complete the entire session.
Here are some of the features of the Muscle Booster App:
An Extensive and Varied Training Library
Workout Overviews
A Personalized Training Plan
Workout Player, this includes – audio prompts, 3Dmodel highlighting muscles, music synchronization
Apple Watch Synchronization – to synchronise with Apple Watch to track workouts
A Personalized Meal Plan
WalkFit
WalkFit is available in 9 languages for both Android and iOS users and has over 16 million downloads from all over the world. This app offers individualized walking plans and in-the-moment advice to help people get healthier and more fit. The app can be downloaded for free but requires a reasonable fee to access other features.
WalkFit app helps the users in the following ways:
Countdown of total time and active time.
Pedometer with alerts to let users know when milestones are reached in terms of steps.
How many calories are burned?
The app measures the distance travelled, as well as the pace and speed of users.
WalkFit makes it possible for users to be phone-free by syncing the app’s data to their Fitbit.
The app gives a selection of fitness tasks
There are statistical charts that reflect users’ progress and trends using the exercise data they have already completed.
Other than creating mobile applications, WellTech is also engaged in offering courses for those who want to start their career in IT.
WellTech Academy
WellTech Academy is an educational platform that is designed to offer coachings for those professionals who are interested in joining the IT industry. The company has a total of three years of experience in implementing educational projects.
WellTech Academy has a total of 29 projects to start IT careers, 270+ alumni of educational projects, and 56 graduates from the academy. Once the candidate finishes the course, they even get the chance to join a product IT company and have the opportunity to develop Fitness & Health Apps.
They offer programs like;
Digital Marketing Camp (online)
Creative Marketing Camp (online)
Product Camp (online)
QA Bootcamp (online)
The main goal of WellTech Academy is, “To impact product IT development by improving the knowledge and expertise of entry-level specialists.”
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by StepSetGo.
The benefits of fitness go on and on, but you need consistency and discipline in order to stick with a routine long enough to reap those benefits. That’s where technology can help. The right app can act as a virtual personal trainer or training partner to keep you motivated and accountable. Running and jogging help to build strong bones, as it is a weight-bearing exercise, strengthen your muscles, improve cardiovascular fitness, burn plenty of kilojoules and help you maintain a healthy weight.
StepSetGo is one such health and fitness app that lets people earn coins after every walk, which they can redeem in the in-app store for free products or discounts. StepSetGo app aims to get people out of the workout rut by incentivizing the process of walking.PM Modi also recognized this fitness app in his Mann ki Baat address.
With StepSetGo, founders wanted to make fitness simple, engaging, fun, and get as many people as possible to take up the challenge without asking them to do too much. So, walking was something that they knew they could use as an instigator to get users to get moving. It is something that they regularly do, all they needed to do was track it, institute a rewarding system, and make it social.
How StepSetGo works is simple; the app tracks everything from users’ steps, calories lost to the kilometers walked. It then converts those steps into SSG coins which is the currency used to redeem offers from the in-app marketplace called the ‘Bazaar’. Users can earn 1 SSG coin for every thousand steps they take. While fairly simple, earning these coins is purely dependent on the user’s diligence and persistence towards getting those steps in daily.
Once enough coins are accumulated, the user can reward his/her progress with gadgets, apparel, online courses, wellness products, and even bikes from the Bazaar section of the app. StepSetGo has taken things one step further, by heightening the engagement and motivation by introducing a healthy dose of friendly competition through the ‘Arena’ section in the app. There, users can compete with family and friends to reach specific goals, which ultimately encourages the building of healthier communities.
There is no limit to the number of coins a user can collect but limitations are only determined by each individual and also there are daily limitations. Therefore the longer your commitment to fitness is, the more rewards you can earn with StepSetGo. This simple yet viral concept has, in the last two years building its registered user base to nearly 7 Million.
StepSetGo Tools
JIRA, Confluence, Asana, Slack, Whatsapp Web are the few tools StepSetGo uses to ensure business continuity and seamlessness. Additionally, they’ve invested in an Atlassian suite for better communication within the team.
StepSetGo – Industry
2020 has been an extremely transformational year for the fitness industry. The almost overnight churn of traditional to virtual has not only had an impact on the responsiveness of the industry to adapt and evolve but also has molded a new generation of fitness enthusiasts. This new generation has finally been given enough nudges towards making that long-term commitment to their fitness journey and is seeking more accessible means to achieve it. Apps, virtual training, gamification with a combination of traditional offline solutions will chart out the next few years of the industry.
StepSetGo – Founders
StepSetGo was founded by Shivjeet Ghatge, Misaal Turakhia, and Abhay Pai.
StepSetGo Founders – Abhay Pai, Misaal Turakhia, and Shivjeet Ghatge
Abhay, Misaal, and Shivjeet have been friends for a while and they’ve always wanted to work together on something they could call their own. Sports and fitness are shared passions and the trio always knew they wanted to create the next big thing in the Indian fitness space. They all come from varied backgrounds, which came together perfectly to build and launch StepSetGo.
Abhay Pai
Abhay Pai is the Co-founder and CTO at StepSetGo. He holds an M.Tech degree and specializes in building high-scale technology solutions while heading the engineering team that develops, manages, and maintains all server-side infrastructures. He is also involved actively in the development and optimizations of the iOS and Android mobile apps for StepSetGo. While working with high scale tech-driven companies like IBM and BookMyShow, Abhay learned quickly what goes into building and scaling up a platform – which made him the perfect fit at StepSetGo.
Misaal Turakhia is a Co-founder and CPO at StepSetGo. With a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from NMIMS and a Master’s degree in Advanced Computer Science from the University of Leicester, Misaal handles the technical aspects of the product, UI & UX, as well as app development. After switching from a leadership position at Fork Media, Misaal developed a logistics app for his father’s spice trading business, which received a lot of attention and instigated his drive to pursue the next big thing. Watching his father run his own business gave him the inspiration to start his own entrepreneurial journey and that came into motion through StepSetGo.
Shivjeet Ghatge
Shivjeet Ghatge is a Co-founder and CEO at StepSetGo. As CEO, he looks after the finances, marketing, and business development for the platform, which are the areas of his core competence. After graduating from Grenoble Ecole de Management with a degree in international business, he began his journey as a working professional with some extremely reputable agencies like Duval Guillaume, a prominent and well-known advertising agency in Belgium, Publicis Paris, Umbrella Design, and Grey Worldwide. Working with these companies helped him hone his skills in brand marketing and business development, which eventually led him to start his own consulting agency. Working with this new generation of go-getters who were determined to go off the beaten path, in a direction that had not been explored by their predecessors inspired him to do the same.
What started out as a three-person setup, out of a friend’s father’s office space, has now grown to a 32-member team. StepSetGo’s team comprises young, vivacious individuals who work dedicatedly to make the platform reach newer heights in the least amount of time possible. The success of StepSetGo is a joint and collective ambition.
StepSetGo – Startup Story | How was StepSetGo Founded?
Misaal, Abhay, and Shivjeet have always had a passion for fitness, and they knew that was the space they wanted to be in. While the trio went through multiple concepts that went from the idea board to the actual business plan, they knew that they still hadn’t found a hook that would set them apart from the rest. This was when, during a seemingly innocent conversation about their sporadic workout regimens that involved spurts of rigorous workouts with bouts of none at all, Abhay mentioned that if they got paid to exercise, they’d take their commitment to fitness a lot more seriously. That was when StepSetGo was born.
When they were about six months in, at the starting of 2019, they were hesitant about pushing its concept out into the market. After a lot of R&D and testing within their own social circles, they knew that they needed an unbiased sample size in order to get honest and actual feedback. So, they decided to take the leap and on 10th January 2019, they launched the application and did a dipstick at the NMIMS College in Bombay with the students there. Little did they know that by the end of the day StepSetGo would have 200 new registrations and by March 2019, they would be up to about 55,000+ new user registrations.
Their dipstick at NMIMs college launched their first 200 users and from there on their concept has only further catapulted their brand awareness. In the first three months StepSetGo had reached almost 55,000+ registered users a day and today StepSetGo has clocked a total registered users base of nearly 7 million through organic routes.
As people used StepSetGo and saw individuals in their immediate circles reap the rewards, proof of concept was established and ultimately created an almost viral momentum for StepSetGo. Today, the platform has turned into a dinner-table conversation for users and their families.
The organic following StepSetGo acquired a loyal user base that loves using the application, and this helped them cross nearly 7 million registered users in just 20 months. That was a huge accomplishment for them because it was then that they realized that they had a unique concept that had a sense of virality built into it.
StepSetGo – Vision and Mission
The ideation and final launch of StepSetGo involved an immense amount of market research. From their research, they found that there are about 400 million people who were conscious of getting fit. However, only about 45 million were actually doing anything about it. Therefore, their goal was to reach those 350 million or so people and find a way to create something that would not just get them to begin a commitment to their fitness journey or goals but ensure it was a long-term one.
With that in mind and with a joint vision to build a fitter community, they came together to build a platform that would incentivize its users to make a long-term commitment to their fitness journey by providing them with immediate rewards.
StepSetGo – Name, Logo and Tagline
StepSetGo is all about getting started with one’s fitness journey, so they wanted to translate that concept to something that had a lot of energy behind it. The phrases Ready-Set-Go or Get-Set-Go were easy connections for them, considering that, that’s what one says at the start of a competition or race. So, they started to toy with terms that would be a call to action and had a concept of movement to it. That’s how StepSetGo was coined.
Name – StepSetGo
Tagline – Make Every Step Count
StepSetGo Logo
StepSetGo – Business and Revenue Model
The StepSetGo funding is provided by Huddle and ESV. Also, the StepSetGo revenue model as of today is through ad networks like Google, AdMob, and Facebook Audience Network as well as brand partnerships.
StepSetGo – Growth
The initial growth highlights can be summed up by StepSetGo’s social media following, which are:
Instagram – 1,38,000+ Followers
Facebook – 79,294+ people like this
Twitter – 5,162+ Followers
LinkedIn – 2,082+ Followers
StepSetGo – Customers/Clients Acquisition
‘Word of mouth has been its most powerful tool to make a name of StepSetGo in an incredibly cluttered market. Their strategy was very simple i.e. reward users for walking and the concept spoke for itself. In fact, their referral campaign is what has helped them really escalate the momentum at which they grew, because it gave users an easy way to build their SSG coins piggy bank by just getting more people to not just join but start walking and complete a minimum of 5000 steps. Additionally, at the beginning of the lockdown, since it was mandated for people to stay at home, they even instituted an indoor walking rewards system to continue to motivate and incentivize their users to keep up their progress.
Apart from that, marketing hasn’t played a very pivotal role in StepsetGo’s growth, however introducing new gamification features and avenues through which users can interact with social circles, at consistent intervals is what has helped keep things engaging. To enhance the appeal, they’ve collaborated with leading brands like Bajaj Avenger, Bewakoof, Skechers, Puma, and Decathlon among others to reward their users for making an effort to stay fit.
StepSetGo – Partnerships
StepSetGo has seen partnerships, among which the partnership with Symbo on April 28, 2022, is the latest one. The collaboration with Symbo Insurance, a leading insurtech firm, aims to launch a one-of-a-kind health insurance. This health insurance will be available on the app of the award-winning health and fitness industry disruptor, StepSetGo (SSG), which will also help the users earn cashback on their premium. This will make StepSetGo foray into the new segment of insurance. SSG, thus, will not only take care of the health of the users but also insure their health in real-time. This SSG insurance in partnership with Symbo will be cost-friendly, effective, and unique in nature.
The incentives that StepSetGo will likely offer will be awarded as monthly cashback, where the users would be able to earn back a maximum of 25% of the price of the premium by meeting their step goals. For instance, if someone completes 60,000 steps in a month, 2000 steps daily on an average, then he/she will be able to earn a minimum of 10% cashback. Thus, if he/she wants to claim 25% cashback, then 4,50,000 steps must be completed per month, which will make 15,000 steps daily on an average. The users can, in this way, keep track of the total steps they have completed, and the cashback they have earned. This will help them stay motivated and consistent.
The challenge was creating an application that was easy to use for everyone. The founders had to keep in mind the policies required for both Android and iOS systems. Their motive was to target anyone with a smartphone who could understand the concept and smoothly use the app. Building an application for the masses is tougher than it sounds even when one has a great idea.
StepSetGo – Marketing Strategy
StepSetGo’s one and only marketing strategy have been ‘word of mouth’, which was only made possible by a simple concept but had a unique added concept of customer-centric engagement at its core. It helped them get their first 200 users and has continued to help them grow their base to almost 7 million today.
StepSetGo recently won the Atmanribhar Bharat Innovation Challenge under the health & fitness category.
PM Modi also recognized this fitness app in his Mann ki Baat address.
StepSetGo – Future Plans
Userbase: over 7 million registered users
Notable client: The app has also collaborated with leading brands like Bajaj Avenger, Bewakoof, Skechers, Puma, and Decathlon among others
As per Similarweb’s data, StepSetGo ranks second after the Aarogya Setu app in terms of user engagement under India’s free apps’ category. StepSetGo is completely bootstrapped and is less than 2 years old. More than 95% of all of StepSetGo’s users are organically acquired. In September, StepSetGo entered the top 50 free apps under the Indian ‘all’ category and reached the #2 spot in India under the ‘health and fitness category.
There will be more fitness-oriented features that go beyond just walking. More of the gamification that you already see on the app, to keep people motivated. Additionally, there will be quite a few features that are coming up in the bazaar section that is just around the corner.
FAQs
What is StepSetGo?
StepSetGo is fitnessthe app tracks everything from users’ steps, calories lost to the kilometers walked. It then converts those steps into SSG coins which is the currency used to redeem offers from the in-app marketplace called the ‘Bazaar’. Users can earn 1 SSG coin for every thousand steps they take.
How does StepSetGo earn money?
At the moment, StepSetGo gets its revenue from advertisements, which the users can choose to watch to earn coins but a user can earn only up to four coins per day through this.
Who is the founder of Step Set Go?
Shivjeet Ghatge, Misaal Turakhia, and Abhay Pai are the founders of StepSetGo.
Is StepSetGo a Chinese app?
No, StepSetGo is an Indian app headquartered in Mumbai.
Cure.Fit is a health and wellness startup based in Bangalore founded in 2016 by Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori. However, the latter left the company in October 2020. Cure.Fit distinguishes itself from other players on the market by using a mix of online and offline platforms to direct its preventive health philosophy through interaction, coaching, and delivery.
The company initially started at HSR, Bangalore with one fitness center. Today it operates more than 100 centers in the city of Bangalore and has also expanded to other cities.
The multiple services of Cure.Fit, including Eat.fit meal delivery has hooked millennials to healthier habits and food. The mobile application that Cure.Fit offers has an integrated framework that promotes healthier lifestyles and mental health.
After a rebranding attempt, Cure.fit has changed the name of its “Cure.fit” app to “Cult.fit”, as of May 11, 2021. Cure.fit has turned into a unicorn startup, valued at $1.56 bn, on November 10, 2021, thus becoming the 36th unicorn in 2021 and 77th unicorn overall in India. The company was reviewed as a unicorn after a cross-selling deal with Zomato, where the fitness brand acquired the fitness arm of the foodtech giant, Fitso for $50 mn and infused another $50 mn.
Being a health-tech startup, Cure.Fit has rather witnessed an exciting and unique journey whether it is the funding or the expansion of the company, which we will discuss later on in this article when compared to that of other health-tech startups of the country.
The company’s funding was always deeply rooted, which began with the rounds of biggies like Axis and HDFC and was complemented with Flipkart, Myntra, and the latest round where the company raised around $75m from Tata Digital. The brand has successfully raised over $479.6M in a total of around 10 funding rounds. Furthermore, Cure.Fit has also acquired a handful of companies like Tribe Fitness, a1000Yoga, and Kristy’s Kitchen, which helped in further expansion of the brand. Its recent acquisition was TREAD.
With its innovative marketing plan that comprises unique campaigns and other promotional ventures, the company is now operational with more than 180 fitness centers across the country.
At the core of the vision of Cure.Fit lies holistic health and well-being, which the brand wants to make easily accessible to people all around the nation. To make it possible Cure.Fit has an unshakable focus on the mind, body, and nutrition of their consumers and others.
Though the original business model of the company mainly focused on gyms, healthy foods, and health clinics, their model also included online/digital fitness sessions after the pivot, which is effectively leveraged after the COVID-19 outbreak. To sum up the business model, it consists of four pillars or platforms that are built to empower a healthy lifestyle. Cure.fit also has a mobile application that offers an integrated platform to bring in healthy lifestyles and holistic cure, concerning fitness, food, and mental well-being:
Cult.Fit
With the assistance of the best class trainers and group workouts, this section of Cure.Fit is built to make exercise enjoyable and easy. It can be done as a group class at a Cult.Fit center and at home with the help of DIY videos.
Cult.fit became a popular fitness brand over the years and no less than a market leader that was synonymous with success. As a result, Cure.fit had further aimed to expand their own brand under a single, popular banner, “Cult.fit”. Cure.fit now has been rebranded as Cult.fit, effective from May 11, 2021, onwards.
Cult.Fit had acquired Gold’s Gym by picking up a majority stake in F2 Fun & Fitness India Pvt Ltd.
Mind.Fit
This section includes mental fitness solutions. It provides different practices such as yoga, meditation and care. Whether it’s stress and anxiety management, better sleep quality or focus improvement, or combining your body-mind, there are many formats to suit the needs of the users.
Care.Fit
By providing physician consultation in its health centers via video conferencing. This platform provides basic health care needs. It provides high-quality facilities such as in-house pharmacy and medical services, health monitors, ultrasound systems, ECGs and diagnostic test packs.
Eat.Fit
This platform offers fresh and delicious food which is nutritious and is prepared with special care to keep it healthy. There are a range of food and menus to choose from when offering healthy and conservative-free items.
Cure.fit acquired the 10th position in the highest funded startups in 2018. However, Eat.fit was declared a separate entity after it spun off its parent Cure.fit on October 1, 2020. This was done because of the rising demands, as mentioned by Cure.fit. Varun Dhawan is the face of the flagship brand of Curefoods, Eat.fit.
In a very short time, Cure.Fit has attracted a large number of viewers because they answer consumer questions and link consumers to the brand. Cure.Fit creates material such that influences consumers to buy their services.
Social Media Marketing
Cure.Fit wins the people’s hearts through its committed sharing of content. Cure.Fit exactly understands who its customers are and produces persuasive content.
Cure.Fit aims at reaching people who want to lead a balanced and fit lifestyle seriously with 3.5 Lakh followers on Facebook and Instagram. It uses the platform to provide up-to-date information, to submit invitations for events, posts, imaginative posts, tips and recipes for healthy food and drinks, customer reviews, etc.
Offline Marketing
Along with leveraging the cutting-edge technologies to gear up their marketing initiatives embracing the digital ways, Cure.Fit has also made space for marketing offline as well. The company has opted for active radio channels where they assign their fitness experts to conduct talk sessions.
Influencer Marketing
Cure.Fit has developed a strategy for influencing the promotion of its releases to promote new goods. The brand collaborated with many inspiring figures from around the world, including Hrithik Roshan, Milind Soman, Tiger Shroff and Sindhu, as well as other prominent athletes. Hrithik Roshan has also signed a five-year agreement with his brand ambassador Cure.Fit.
Cure.Fit has witnessed a considerable growth in the health and wellness sector in the past years and it gets a renewed boost with Tata Digital signing an MoU to invest up to $75 million on June 7, 2021. Mukesh Bansal, Founder and CEO of Cure.Fit will join Tata Digital as President, according to the strategic deal that both the companies are looking forward to.
The expansion plan of Cure.Fit as clearly laid by the company includes:
Introducing a ready-to-eat category
Bringing a whole new range of workout apparel and equipment
Introducing the facility of online doctor consultation
Help in the consultation of super-specialists online for you and your family
Reaching 20 cities encompassing 200 outlets in 2022
A Look at the STP of Cure.Fit
Cure.Fit segments its buyers to urban and rural divisions where their users range from kids and youths to adults.
The main target consumers of Cure.Fit is based out of urban cities and metros, mostly belonging to higher income groups and aged between 20-40 years.
Cure.Fit as a brand is positioned as a fitness brand that promotes “healthy body, mind, and soul.”
How does the brand engage its users?
Cure.Fit has seen a successful run engaging a considerably large band of consumers throughout the years. The 3 main methods that Cure.Fit adopt to engage its users:
Gamification – Cure.fit has a unique way to encourage its users to display their badges and weekly ranks to their friends.
Buddy workout – Cure.fit believes in spreading their business by word of mouth and has a keen affinity towards the “kid next door.”
Fitter families – Cure.fit encourages families to come on board and keeps them motivated with the help of interesting programs like super family of the week.
Acquisitions of Cure.Fit
Cure.fit has acquired over 14 companies to date. Cure.Fit acquired Urban Terrain on December 20, 2021, and then it acquired Gold’s Gym on February 14, 2022, which was the last acquisition of Cure.Fit. Here are some of the other major acquisitions:
Acquired Company Name
Acquired Date
Price
Gold’s Gym
February 14, 2022
–
Urban Terrain
December 20, 2021
–
OneFitPlus
December 20, 2021
–
RPM Fitness
December 20, 2021
–
FITSO
November 11, 2021
$50 mn
TREAD
June 10, 2021
–
Fitternity
February 9, 2021
–
Onyx
January 18, 2021
–
Rejoov
April 12, 2019
–
Seraniti
November 20, 2018
–
Fitness First India Pvt. Ltd
May 22, 2018
–
Campaigns of Cure.Fit
#FORTHELOVEOFFIT
Cure.Fit breaks the barrier and allows people to share their health in the most enjoyable way. It provides a unique offer that includes physical, emotional, and dietary fitness. The film aims to demonstrate the full range of deals from the cure.fit app, which also tries to get people to think fitness is more open and fun.
This campaign shows that Cure.Fit will benefit you if you don’t feel well and are not prepared to attend a physician.
#CULTLIVE
The aim of this campaign is to demonstrate that cult trainers are dedicated to your health and fitness and encourage you to enter the app for a live workout.
Customer Feedbacks of Cure.Fit
Cure.Fit has been largely successful in onboarding new customers and retaining their old ones, and has ended up being recommended by a large group of customers. Cure.Fit allows unlimited pauses in between the challenges that the company presents its users. This has contributed largely to the successful streak of customer retention that the company boasts of!
With its successful branding, quality products and services, and innovative motivational ventures it has been seen that 90% of their cult users recommend the classes to others. Furthermore, it has also been seen that 60% of the total users renew their subscriptions.
Conclusion
Mobile apps drive the world today and people really rely on them for everyday work. Apps like Cure.Fit try a lot harder to interact with people and completely change their lifestyle in these tough periods of social separation. Cure.Fit has used its marketing strategy in a way that the their consumers respond.
FAQs
Who owns Cure.Fit?
Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori are the founders of Cure.fit.
When was Cure.Fit founded?
Cure.fit was founded and launched in 2016.
Who are the target audience of Cure.Fit?
The target audience of Cure.fit are people from the urban population who are between 20 years to 40 years of age.
Are Eat.Fit and Cure.Fit the same?
No. Eat.fit was previously a subsidiary of Cure.fit, but was declared an independent entity in October 2020.
The hunger for success makes you forget about health. You might be engrossed with your startup but don’t work yourself to death for a bright entrepreneurial future. A wise man once said that health is wealth.
The healthcare sector is growing rapidly in the Indian landscape, in terms of revenue as well as market share. The Indian healthcare industry pegged at $100 billion is expected to grow by 23% by 2020 to $280 billion. This growing market has given rise to many health-tech startups in India. They cater to various healthcare segments, help book appointments, sell medicines online, and operate as a commercialized unit of the venture.
We have also covered a list of Pharmaceutical Startups in India.
In this post, we take a look at some prospering, promising, and growing health startups in India. Here is a list of healthcare companies in India:
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One of the biggest healthcare startups in India, Netmeds is an online platform that has firmly established itself as India’s leading online pharmacy with millions of active customers and deliveries to more than 19,000 PIN codes. It is also called ‘India ki Pharmacy’ and offers streamlined shopping for medicines and other healthcare products through its 24×7 online portal and mobile app.
Netmeds is supported by over 14 logistics centers spread across the country. Netmeds has a multilingual voice, chat, and email customer care center and a team of licensed pharmacists who receive, digitize, and approve millions of handwritten prescriptions.
In 2018, Netmeds had 3 million downloads and grew to more than $512 million; it is projected to top $3.645 billion by the year 2022.
ImpactGuru
ImpactGuru Website
ImpactGuru is a tech-for-good platform founded with a vision to make healthcare accessible to all and save more lives. It provides comprehensive crowdfunding solutions to empower individuals, NGOs, and social enterprises to raise funds for medical emergencies and other similar causes.
Docplexus
Docplexus Website
Docplexus is a platform for doctors where they can create their own communities and discuss problems with other doctors from all around the world. Founded by Phanish Chandra, an IITian, Docplexus has more than 2,75,000 Doctors as its members. It is a free platform; however, one needs to be a licensed doctor to create an account on DocPlexus.
Mera Medicare
MeraMedicare Website
Founded by Pankaj Gupta, MeraMedicare is a healthcare startup. MeraMedicare provides home delivery of medicines in 2 to 12 hours with a 15% discount on almost all medicines. It is a reliable and hassle-free option for ordering medicines.
3Hcare
3Hcare Website
3Hcare is a Delhi-based healthcare startup. It is an online marketplace for healthcare services. 3Hcare provides detailed information on healthcare services across India. Users can simply log on to 3Hcare’s website and find out about diagnostic centers and hospitals as per their requirements. The name “3Hcare” stands for “Help, Health, and Happiness” and signifies the startup’s vision to help people maintain their health and happiness.
Ekincare
Ekincare Website
Ekincare is one of the most innovative health-tech startups in India. Ekincare provides people with the facility to save their medical documents and access those documents anytime from anywhere. Ekincare keeps your data secure and also lets you understand your medical data in a simplified manner through graphical charts and visuals.
Practo
Practo Website
Practo is one of the world’s leading healthcare platforms and an independent medical website that focuses on patients connects millions of patients with healthcare providers and doctors around the world and helps people make better healthcare decisions.
Practo helps its consumers manage healthcare requirements such as searching for healthcare experts, booking an appointment with doctors, online doctor consultation, getting their tests done, and ordering medicines online. Practo is a patient-focused medical website and has over 1 lac doctor profiles from all over India and Singapore. Practo is a free service for the patients and the doctors.
Practo also provides its users with a diagnostics search feature on its web-based platform through high-quality photographs and filter options. It lets users manage their reports and medical data using the app.
Practo is a Bangalore-based health-tech startup launched in 2008. Practo was founded by Shashank ND and Abhinav Lal. They built the software platform to digitize their health records and facilitate online consultations.
PharmEasy
PharmEasy Website
One of the top healthcare startups in India, PharmEasy is a Mumbai-based pharma platform founded by Dharmil Sheth in 2015 .PharmEasy is led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Orios Venture Partners. It is one of the most successful healthcare startups in India. PharmEasy is currently operating in seven cities—Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Pune, Jaipur and Ahmedabad—and has over 150 partner vendors.
It was launched with a vision to deliver medicines at affordable rates by optimizing supply chain and logistics. PharmEasy now serves more than 100,000 families. The PharmEasy app lets users place orders with just three clicks and re-ordering can be done in one click. It plans to build an ecosystem using technology to connect patients, pharmacies, doctors, diagnostic centers, and healthcare service providers so that each can interact with the other hassle-free. PharmEasy also connects pharmacies spread across the cities, towns, and villages of India.
AddressHealth
AddressHealth Website
AddressHealth was founded by Anand Lakshman in 2010 to ensure that every child attains a state of positive health. AddressHealth is India’s first one-stop-shop for pediatric primary healthcare services.
AddressHealth presently operates three clinics in Bangalore and provides comprehensive pediatric healthcare through clinics and schools for children and adults. AddressHealth has partnered with the government in the MR Vaccine program. AddressHealth reached out to 300,000 students through schools till 2017. It received funding of $1.5 million in series A from Grey Matters Capital and Unitus Seed Fund.
Consure Medical is a Delhi-based company founded by Nishith Chasmawala and Amit Sharma in 2012. It is an emerging medical device company that focuses on developing and commercializing novel critical care technologies for 80% of the global population that does not have access to subsidized healthcare. Consure Medical delivers fecal incontinence therapy devices.
Consure Medical delivers a solution for fecal containment to assist bedridden patients. Qora is an applicator inserted into the anal cavity to provide a pathway for stool diversion with very little leakage. It offers Qora stool management kit which contains an indwelling fecal drainage device for the management of fecal incontinence and can be used across a continuum of care facilities, from ICUs to nursing homes. The company is also operational in San Francisco, California.
DocTalk
Doctalk Website
DocTalk is a Mumbai-based healthcare software application to store medical reports and prescriptions and share the same with your doctor. It was founded by Akshat Goenka and Vamsee Chamakura in 2016. DocTalk provides an AI-based virtual assistant application to simplify the healthcare ecosystem of India.
It allows patients to safely save all their medical reports and files on the cloud which can then be accessed from anywhere digitally.
HealthKart
Healthkart Website
Healthkart is a Gurgaon-based company founded in 2011 and offers various fitness products and services to help consumers achieve their fitness goals through its e-health store. It is one of the biggest medical e-stores in India. Healthkart offers various healthcare products such as nutrition supplements, diabetes supplies, home medical devices, and baby care products. These products can be ordered online and are delivered by HealthKart personnel to ensure safety. The healthcare platform was initially launched as a website and a mobile app that would function as a generic drug search portal. It has now become a marketplace for customers to search and purchase much more than just prescribed drugs.
Approximately 80-90% of the supplements sold in India are imported from developed countries like the US and Europe. Heavy customs duty on supplements attracts large amounts of parallel or unethical imports. Given these products have been illegally imported into the country, sourcing information is not available and thus quality becomes a question. HealthKart provides 100% authentic products to its customers by maintaining:
Tight control over the supply chain.
Quality control during distribution.
14 days hassle-free return policy.
The company has also launched FitUp which is an app for health and fitness supplements. It offers free assistance and nutrition counselling.
BeatO
BeatO Website
Founded for diabetes patients, BeatO provides a convenient and smart device to measure blood sugar levels. You can use them with your smartphone by putting it in the headphone jack and using the strip to measure your blood sugar level. After you measure your blood sugar, it offers you suggestions and shares the results with BeatO’s experts if medical intervention is needed.
Niramai
Niramai Website
Founded in 2016, Niramai wants to minimize fatalities attributed to breast cancer. Breast cancer, which most females take for granted in the initial stages, is one of the most common forms of cancer among women. To make it easier to detect breast cancer at an early stage and that too at a lower cost, Niramai uses thermal analytics and artificial intelligence. The technology is mobile; therefore, offering ease of access and usage.
CrelioHealth (formerly LiveHealth)
CrelioHealth Website
Founded by Abhimanyu Bhosle and Mukund Malani in 2013, Live Health makes it easy for healthcare providers to provide their services. Live Health makes the process for labs easier as they can access the information and reports of their patient online. Live Health also helps clinics and labs with operations, marketing, administration, etc. Through Live Health, labs and clinics can focus on their internal processes and the patients instead of worrying about business factors.
Lybrate
Lybrate Website
Available in 4 cities, Lybrate helps find the perfect doctor near you. Many times, a doctor’s visit isn’t out of necessity but for one’s satisfaction. To save your time as well as of the doctor’s, you can consult the doctor on Lybrate. There are more than 1,50,000 professionals who will help you with Lybrate.
Criador Design Labs
Criador Design Labs Website
Criador Design Labs was founded by Abhishek Reddy and Hitesh Devara in 2017. Criador Design Labs is a product design firm that develops new, innovative hardware technology products for consumer healthcare sectors.
The latest product by Criador Labs is EVE Health, a smart water bottle designed to improve medication adherence amongst patients with chronic diseases. It helps patients to stay aware of their dosages and reminds them when it’s time to take their medication. The bottle holds a patent-pending technology with sensors tracking medication intake and a Wi-Fi chipset sending live data to the servers. The data is analyzed and custom notifications and reports are sent to caretakers, hospitals, and insurance companies for taking appropriate actions.
Green Cure Wellness
Green Cure Wellness Website
Green Cure Wellness is one of the leading health startups in India founded by Sanchit Garg in 2015. Green Cure Wellness manufactures herbal personal care and health care products of international quality. It has a team of scientists in Germany who develop high-quality formulations adherent to the European norms.
Germany is the world’s leading technology hub for herbal and natural products. Green Cure leverages the age-old wisdom of Ayurveda coupled with German expertise to manufacture products that are free from side effects.
Health is imperative for success in all aspects of life. The concept of startups is trending today and trends tend to change the world. So healthcare startups, without any doubt, are a significant game-changer.
FAQs
How many healthcare startups are there in India?
There are nearly 5,295 health tech startups in India.
What are health tech startups?
Health tech startups are startups that have an online platform to provide healthcare solutions such as healthcare products, medicines and diagnostic tests.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Doctor Insta.
We are often left in awe as to how digitization has changed the way we live and carry out our daily work. We no longer have to wait in lines to watch a movie, thanks to online ticket booking applications. We don’t have to call a hundred service providers like carpenters and painters to avail their services. That all is available now at just one click, thanks to the online portals.
Similarly, now we have online doctor consultation available 24×7 accessible anytime anywhere. To step up the game and make it available to more and more people in the country, Amit Manjul launched Doctor Insta in 2015.
Read on to know more about the Doctor Insta Company Profile, Founders, Business Model, Funding, Investors and Growth.
Doctor Insta is a “Video-Medicine” platform that provides online consultation in general medicine, pediatrics, psychology, and nutrition. This venture aims to bridge the consultation gap between doctors and patients, by putting a digital channel in place. Through the videos on the portal, the audience is able to audio-visually be connected to the doctors and specialists and avail treatment advice from the specialists within just 15-30 minutes.
This platform provides instant access to the healthcare professionals 24×7 via voice and video calls and also the chatfeature that it has on its application. Besides consultation, it also provides home delivery of medicines and laboratory and diagnostic test reports, which are shared over email.
Doctor Insta Logo
Doctor Insta as of today has more than 100 doctors on its platform, with business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) vertical. With this vertical, the employers pay fixed monthly retainership fees for their employees to access all the services on the Doctor Insta application. This B2B2C vertical covers more than 2,00,000 employees and their families.
Doctor Insta – Founder and Team
Amit Munjal is the founder and CEO of Doctor Insta.
Amit Munjal – Founder and CEO of Doctor Insta
He is a Harvard graduate and a CFA. Amit has worked with quite a few renowned companies like Deloitte, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi bank, and is also the founder and CEO at Brahmax Ventures.
Doctor Insta – How did it start?
In case you’re wondering how an innovative concept like this originally germinated? This is how Doctor Insta started. There was this one time when Amit sprained his ankle and was forced to use a telemedicine app in the States. And surprisingly, he was quite impressed by the experience.
“It helped me access a doctor from the convenience of my residence—saving time and money,” said Amit Munjal, CEO of Doctor Insta.
This very incident inspired this smart, spectacular and very talented young man to start something very similar in India too. Telemedicine has been a very popular concept in the West for a very long time. And the surging and exponential growth in India’s digital economy offered a promising opportunity for on-demand preventive and curative healthcare at one’s doorstep.
Also, India has a poor availability of doctors, so essentially addressing health concerns remotely has been a massive need in the country for a very long time. Besides, there’s also the daunting low doctor-to-people ratio in India, because most qualified and skilled doctors are usually available only in the tier-I cities. For people residing in tier- II and tier- III cities, access to quality healthcare is still a distant dream.
This social need and the budding business opportunity with it inspired the founder Amit Munjal to launch Doctor Insta in 2015.
Doctor Insta Story
Doctor Insta – Business Model and Revenue Model
The Doctor Insta business model has unique B2C and B2B2C Models for Patients and Employers with Gross Margin as high as 70%. It provides access to quality healthcare professionals 24×7. This service is provided through voice and video calls and with the chat feature in its application.
The consultation on this application can be availed of on a pay-as-you-go basis, for which the charge is INR 440 per consultation, or the user also has the choice of taking an annual subscription for which the charge is INR 2,500. The subscription package at Doctor Insta comes with a free 30-day trial period. Also, the user can add up to three dependents in the plan at zilch cost on this application.
“Though major illnesses need to be addressed physically, certain health issues—medicines, gynecology, diet, and nutrition-related issues, among others— can be easily addressed remotely,” said Amit Munjal, founder of Doctor Insta.
Doctor Insta – Competitors
As discussed in the beginning, digitization is upscaling the market big time, and due to that, a lot of other healthcare platforms have come to offer application-based healthcare to the masses.
Top competitors of Doctor Insta are Practo, Medikoe, Cure, DocPlexus, Pluss, MeraDoctor, Portea amongst many more players in the segment. With the reports of soaring opportunities in this segment, Doctor Insta and other startups in the space will be exposed to a plethora of opportunities ahead.
Doctor Insta has raised a total of $7 Million in funding over 3 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Oct 4, 2017 from a Series B round.
Here is a list of all the funding rounds of Doctor Insta:
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
December 2015
Seed Round
$500K
BrahmaX Ventures
August 2016
Series A
$2.5 million
BrahmaX Ventures, RoundGlass Partners
October 2017
Series B
$4 million
BrahmaX Ventures
Doctor Insta – Growth and Revenue
Doctor Insta had around INR 6 crorerevenue in 2017-18
Doctor Insta conducts more than 4,000 consultations a day
Currently running its services at a pan-India level
Collaborated with more than 150 companies such as American Express, SRF, Channel Play, Videocon, Muthoot Finance, etc.
The company today has over 500K application installations
More than 1 million users are using Doctor Insta
Doctor Insta – Future Plans
“There are about one million allopathic doctors in India conducting about 50 million consultations every day. In two years, we want to acquire 2% of this market—one million consultations a day by 2020. The growth prospects are huge,” says Amit Munjal, founder and CEO of Doctor Insta.
Doctor Insta is a “Video-Medicine” platform that provides online consultation in general medicine, pediatrics, psychology, and nutrition. This venture aims to bridge the consultation gap between doctors and patients, by putting a digital channel in place
How does Doctor Insta make money?
It has B2C and B2B2C Models for Patients and Employers with Gross Margin as high as 70%. The consultation on this app can be availed of on a pay-as-you-go basis, for which the charge is INR 440 per consultation, or the user also has the choice of taking an annual subscription for which the charge is INR 2,500.
Who is the Founder of Doctor Insta?
Amit Munjal is the founder and CEO of Doctor Insta.
How much Funding has Doctor Insta raised?
Doctor Insta has raised a total of $7Million in funding over 3 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Oct 4, 2017 from a Series B round for $4 Million led by BrahmaX Ventures.
Who are the competitors of Doctor Insta?
Practo, Medikoe, Cure, DocPlexus, Pluss, MeraDoctor, Portea amongst many more players in the segment.
How much is the revenue of Doctor Insta?
Doctor Insta had around INR 6 crorerevenue in 2017-18.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by FindMyHealth.
Artificial Intelligence is now penetrating almost every existing domain. Finance, healthcare, education, transportation and many sectors are witnessing active use of AI. The idea of this startup was born when Gaurav Bhalotia realized there is a lot to health beyond medicine, and that our bodies need to participate very strongly to recover from any illness. Gaurav thus started FindMyHealth in 2018 with a vision to give individuals control of their health, and to help them stay healthy and recover quickly.
However, the seeds of the current product was sowed in April 2019 after the successful Proof of Concept (POC) of its computer vision technology. The platform allows users to get a peek into their inner health based on an Ayurvedic framework. It starts by analyzing the face to identify the body constitution and visual aging or obesity, which is followed by a conversation with its AI doctor to identify the state of the inner health.
Read this article to know more about the Journey of FindMyHealthalong with its Business Model, How it works, Funding, Growth, Competitors & More.
The inspiration behind this idea is Gaurav’s health experiences (self and family) where he moved from being a skeptic towards alternative medicine to becoming a believer in the body’s power and participation in recovery. There is a lot of subjectivity in both discovery and assessment in the alternative medicine space today.
The journey started with an attempt to use technology to bring the power of Ayurveda and alternative medicine to more people. The biggest gap which Gaurav saw to start with was helping people identify what herbs to take, many people were consuming Ayurvedic herbs but most of it through ad-hoc recommendations from friends and family.
Over the last one year we have managed to use the knowledge from Ayurveda to build a framework for remote assessment, AI-driven recommendations, and doorstep delivery of Herbal Supplements, says Gaurav Bhalotia, founder of FindMyHealth.
FindMyHealth – Target Market Size
The healthcare market in India is expected to reach US$ 372 billion by 2022, driven by rising incomes, greater healthcare awareness, lifestyle diseases, and increasing access to insurance. We are combining AI and Ayurveda to build these solutions. Ayurveda market in India is expected to be around $9 billion by 2022.
There will be 130 million Health Conscious Individuals (HCIs) by 2022. Increasingly people will seek out more control over their health, as is showing up in fitness products today. There will be a demand for solutions that connect our everyday actions to health outcomes. E.g. what we eat, our lifestyles, etc. So essentially coupled with awareness, we will see greater participation in staying healthier.
FindMyHealth – Products/Services
FindMyHealth (website), the company’s first offering allows users to get a peek into their inner health, based on an Ayurvedic framework of what health is. It starts with a face selfie analysis to identify the body constitution and visual aging/obesity, which is followed up by a conversation with their AI doctor to identify the state of the inner functional health.
FindMyHealth Product
This together is used to generate a detailed health fingerprint of the user and identify recommendations for herbs, foods, and a healthy lifestyle. They also offer a personalized supplement, which compounds all the recommended herbs into a single pill for supporting health and recovery.
FindMyHealth – Founders & Team
FindMyHealth is founded by Gaurav Bhalotia.
Gaurav Bhalotia | Founder, FindMyHealth
The founder, Gaurav Bhalotia, is an expert in information retrieval, personalization and building large scale systems. He is passionate about holistic health and traditional Indian Health Sciences and Medicine. FindMyHealth, a preventive healthcare platform (startup), grew out of his belief that everybody deserves a healthy lifestyle and that it is viable to take control of our own health through personalization and AI.
He likes to address his startup as a scorecard for one’s inner health and their personalized supplement buddy. Gaurav is a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology – Mumbai – and has an MS in Computer Science from the University of California Berkeley.
On the core team, Dr. Payal Khandelwal is the resident Ayurveda expert. She has an MD in Ayurveda from Tilak Ayurveda Institute and is an Expert at treating lifestyle and chronic diseases. She won the National Herbal Research Award in 2010. The team currently is made up of engineers, data scientists, doctors and nutrition experts.
FindMyHealth’s Team
FindMyHealth – Name, Tagline & Logo
The team felt that the biggest problem that people have in healthcare is a lack of control. Health is so much of a personal thing. One has to be aware of one’s body and health work daily to maintain it. The company wanted to build something that gives people control of their health and helps them identify, interpret, and work with their inner balance. Hence, the name FindMyHealth (help find where the balance is and then help find a fix).
FindMyHealth Logo
FindMyHealth – Business & Revenue Model
The FindMyHealth business model works on a freemium model, the assessment is free (so is the identification of the right herbs). They intend to monetize the personalized supplement that is custom-built for the user. They will also have personalized diet plans very soon. Right now, the company has two paid offerings on the website – personalized Ayurvedic herb mix for INR 999 and therapeutic (disease reversal diet plans) for INR 6,999.
FindMyHealth – User Acquisition & Growth
What has worked for FindMyHealth is the selfie analysis, people find it unique and it enables high click-through rates and reasonable acquisition costs. While the selfie brings users, their deep insights into inner health help keep them. According to the company, more than 60% of the users are going through completing the entire assessment, sometimes spending up to 10 minutes on it, which is a lot in terms of internet time.
The company has tied up with Hyderabad based Healtheeliving to provide them the technology platform for their therapeutic nutrition plans. One of the campaigns that went almost viral is their Corona Risk Calculator. They started seeing a lot of people share it on Facebook and WhatsApp and a significant proportion of traffic coming through these shares.
The biggest challenge has been the marriage of technology and medicine, to get Ayurvedic doctors and nutrition experts and engineers/data scientists to think and work on a common plane. FindMyHealth has built a very strong culture of data-based science, high ownership, and building for scale.
The next challenge has been creating awareness and sometimes a strong positive awareness of Ayurveda. A lot of people are exposed to Ayurvedic medicines and treatments but in a very ad-hoc manner, the startup wishes to make it easy and accurate to access and consume Ayurveda.
FindMyHealth – Competitors
There are other players in the space like 1balance delivering personalized supplements, and Jiva Ayurveda, Dr. Vaidya’s, Cureveda, Organic India, etc., trying to create a new-age brand for Ayurvedic supplements. On assessments, there are players like NadiTarangini and Ayurythm building technologies for Ayurvedic assessments of Individuals.
Personalization is the distinctive benefit of their AI, enabling them to identify the unique health situation of an individual and connect them to appropriate targeted actions drawn from the wisdom of Ayurveda and other natural techniques. An additional strong aspect of the company’s technology is that it can be done in a non-invasive manner and remotely on the app.
FindMyHealth strongly admires CureFit which has been able to create an aspirational brand around health and fitness. They would like to similarly create a great brand that will help individuals take control of their inner health and use the platform for regular assessment, recommendations, and supplement needs.
The company closed an angel round in July last year for an undisclosed amount. The team is focusing on fine-tuning the technology and monetization model before raising additional funds.
FindMyHealth – Recognition & Achievements
The company received the most promising healthtech startup of 2020 award by CIOReview India.
FindMyHealth – Future Plans
Having just launched, the company is nearing 20,000 completed assessments on the platform. Their target Market currently is India and they want to be the platform for personalized Ayurveda – starting from deep assessment to technology products that support individuals’ journeys back to balance and good health.
“We are working on personalized diet plans driven off our AI, that will be Ayurveda compliant. Diet is a significant part of who we are and diet corrections can have a huge impact on healing and recovery”, says Gaurav Bhalotia, owner of FindMyHealth.
FindMyHealth – Conclusion
Findmyhealth are on a mission to revolutionize healthcare delivery to individuals. They are a team of technologists, data scientists and Ayurveda experts. They combine modern technology and trusted science of Ayurveda to give users the tools to take control of their everyday health. Findmyhealth patented AI based selfie analysis and health score identifies the unique constitutional balance of an individual. They then offer users the ability to design their own personalized Ayurvedic herb mix for overall health and wellbeing.
FindMyHealth – FAQ’s
How are our products differ from other nutritional supplements?
Nutritional supplements are used to cover for deficiencies of the essential nutrition that a person is not able to get from food. Ayurvedic herbs on the other hand have rejuvenated property, helping restore the body’s balance towards equilibrium.
Will there be any side effects? Are these safe to be taken daily?
The products are 100% natural and have been time tested to have no unintended side effects. The herbs have no chemical ingredients and are designed to be taken twice daily. Regular and continuous use is necessary to induce the body’s recovery towards the natural balance.
How long will I have to take these supplements?
One can start seeing improvements in one month, however, findmyhealth recommends that you take them for a minimum of three months. If you take a three-month subscription, they will recommend you to retake the online assessment every month.
Can I take other medicine with FindMyhealth?
Yes, you can continue taking your regular medicine along with FindMyhealth supplements. Findmyhealth doctors do not recommend stopping or modifying the dosage of your current medication without consulting a doctor.
Do I need to consult a doctor before consuming them?
Findmyhealth system has been designed by experts in both Ayurveda and Computer Science and these recommendations have gone through thorough testing. In addition, every recommendation is individually reviewed by the doctors before getting shipped.
How do I contact Findmyhealth?
For any other questions, you may have, please write to contact@findmyhealth.com
In the recent years the number startups or ventures funded by well-known Bollywood celebrities have increased. In 2020, many celebrities like Alia Bhatt, Suniel Shetty, Shilpa Shetty Kundra, Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif and Sonu Sood have helped the startup ecosystem rise during the hard times of global pandemic by investing or endorsing the products of startups. This also includes Madhuri Dixit Nene, as the iconic actress has also funded in a startup GOQii known for its fitness technology.
The Padma Shri awarded actress, Madhuri Dixit has also launched her own online dance academy known as Dance with Madhuri which has increase 5 times because of the ongoing pandemic, she is also the co-founder of the production company called RNM Moving Pictures with her husband Dr. Shriram Nene.
Madhuri Dixit Nene is an Indian actress, producer, dancer and a popular television personality. She is known for her work in movies like Devdas, Hum Aapke Hain Koun, Khalnayak, Dil to Pagal Hain, etc.
Madhuri has so far worked in over 70 Bollywood movies and is also one among the highest paid actresses of India, featured in the Forbes India’s Celebrity 100 list for more than 7 times.
Besides that Madhuri Dixit Nene is also known for her Philanthropic work as she is a part of UNICEF and has been vocal about the rights of children and child labor. She is a prominent name in India and uses her platform to endorse brands or even products from many small startups.
GOQii which is pronounced as Go-key, is a fitness technology company that is known for their range of wearable fitness bands with a mobile app and a personalized remote coaching.
The company is founded by Vishal Gondal who was also the CEO and founder of Indiagames and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California with offices in Mumbai, Maharashtra and Shenzhen, China.
An undisclosed amount was funded by Madhuri Dixit Nene and her husband Dr. Shriram Nene in 2014, as they liked that the company provided an end to end healthcare and wellness experience for users.
GOQii products
The smart-tech enabled and integrated preventive healthcare platform has a long list of investors like Mitsui, Megadelta, Galaxy Digital, Edelweiss, Cheetah Mobile, Ratan Tata, Akshay Kumar, etc.
The wearable fitness brand that GOQii makes collects the activity and sleep data of the user. The data is then reviewed by personal coach through the mobile app, after which the assigned coach guides the user towards a fitness or health goal for them. The app also has premium services which can be accessed after paying a subscription fee.
The app allows its users earn karma points by meeting their target, these points are then donated to a charity of the user’s choice. It also allows users to share their stats on other social media sites.
The mobile app of GOQii also includes health e-commerce store, scheduling health checkups, a health locker and exiting discounts. The company has also launched the personal health locker and a lifestyle doctor known as the GOQii Doctor for medical consultation in 2016.
RNM Moving Pictures Private Limited is a non-government company which was founded by Madhuri Dixit Nene and her husband Dr. Shriram Nene in June of 2012. This company is an embodiment of Madhuri and Dr Nene as it is made with the 30 year old expertise in the Hindi cinema and technology & medical experience.
It has a revenue of $5 million with its headquarters based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The company is known for producing media and content across all platform by leveraging their individual and combined brand identities.
The company is divided into the sections entertainment, lifestyle, interactive gaming and healthcare. RNM moving pictures combines the individual strengths, brand identities and unique strengths of the power couple Madhuri Dixit Nene and Dr. Shriram Nene in order to produce world class content and media across different platforms.
The company produces digital products which are viewed on MadhuriDixit.com, the Madhuri Dixit app, Tophealthguru.com and DrNene.com across all Apple and Android devices.
The motive of creating these websites is that the fans can connect with Madhuri Dixit, and get the latest information on Madhuri’s film, dance, art, music as well as he actress’s thoughts and recommendation on fashion, health and beauty.
The DancewithMaduri.com which comes under this company is a dance initiative started by her for bringing her passion for dance to the world. The 10 year old company started with an idea of merging different sectors into one platform and giving the user a wide range to choose from.
Dance with Madhuri is a well-established online gamified dance academy that allows its users to learn various dance styles. The Dance With Madhuri platform is the first ever celebrity backed online dance academy in the world and allows people to learn different forms of dancing.
Madhuri says that she started this online dance academy because, “Dancing has been my passion since I was 3 years old, and it only grew stronger with time. Dance with Madhuri is an expression of my gratitude to my ever loving fans who have contributed to what I am today.”
About Dance with Madhuri
These dance forms are taught by renowned dancers/choreographers and the videos are designed to teach all levels of dancers from beginner to advance and are planned in a systematic, authentic and conveniently.
DWM allows its users to exhibit their talents by uploading their videos of the same dance or even their progress videos and much more. DWM teaches dance forms like Bollywood, Bharatnatyam, Kathak, Folk, Club Dance Forms, Latin and Ballroom, Bollyhop, Street dance, Contemporary, Jazz, Ballet, Tap dance and Flamenco among others.
Dance with Madhuri allows its users to learn various dance styles from the best teachers from their online dance courses and workshops. The website also promotes wellness and offers videos on exercise ranging from Core strengthening, stretching, functional training, Pilates, step burn, dancercise etc.
The user can also apply for a certified courses and also connect with other dancers, participate in contest and events and showcase their talent to the world through this platform.
The company started in February 2013, and was created in just three months with the help of online infrastructure and just three in house employees. When the website was launched it crashed after a while because of the overwhelming response that it received.
According to Dr. Nene, they had over 6 million page views and 200,000 users just within a year. The couple and the team reworked upon it and then relaunched it in 2015.
Earlier the DWM generated its revenue solely from sponsorship and advertisement model, but later changed to DTH subscribers in order to create a liner video channel. The company then got over 100,000 paid subscribers and turned profitable with over 50% of its users coming from India and rest the world. Currently in 2020, the business has grown over five times because of the covid 19 pandemic. The team is now planning to explore more avenues and introduce acting, scriptwriting, gourmet cooking, music and much more.
With the global lockdowns in 2020, many dancers and choreographers had lost their daily living which is why DWM gave them an opportunity to have their classes on its platform.
In an interview Dr. Nene added that, “Dance With Madhuri has been self- sustaining and could grow organically but looking at the potential it has, we are looking for strategic partners and funding so that we can expand it further.”
The couple is now working on starting a new venture which will be dedicated for holistic healthcare. Dr Shriram Nene who is a cardiovascular surgeon in America, has been working on starting this healthcare startup from a long time and is said to launch it soon.
In an interview Dr. Nene shares that, “We are trying to build is a holistic, personalized healthcare which can be used across different media platforms. What people really need is a trusted source which is aligned to their health needs from cradle to grave.”
FAQ
Who is Madhuri Dixit Nene?
Madhuri Dixit Nene is an Indian actress, producer, dancer and a popular television personality.
Which is the startup funded by Madhuri Dixit Nene?
The startup funded by Madhuri Dixit Nene is GOQii is a fitness technology company.
What are the ventures started by Madhuri Dixit Nene?
The ventures started by Madhuri Dixit Nene in RNM Moving Pictures Private Limited and Dance with Madhuri.
How much is Madhuri Dixit worth?
Madhuri Dixit approximately has a net worth of $35 million which roughly translates to Rs. 264 Crores.
What is the first movie of Madhuri Dixit?
Madhuri Dixit made her debut with the 1984 film Abodh.
From the past few years there has been an increase of Bollywood celebrities backing startups as investors or even launching their own ventures. Many celebrities like Alia Bhatt, Suniel Shetty, Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif and Sonu Sood have recently started investing or endorsing the products of startups during the Covid 19 Pandemic in order to help maintain the startup ecosystem.
This also includes Shilpa Shetty Kundra who has launched her own fitness and health app called Simple Soulful and also invested in a Gurugram based startup known as Mamaearth.
Shilpa Shetty Kundra is an Indian actress, film producer, dancer and also is known to be businesswomen and author. The actress is popular for her roles in movies like Baazigar, Main Khiladi Tu Anari, Life in a Metro, etc.
Shilpa Shetty Kundra has been a part of various fitness campaign such as the Fit India movement which was lauched by the Government of India.
She has also been a part owner of the Indian Premium League (IPL) team Rajasthan Royals from 2009 to 2015. Besides that she is also known to be a devote fitness enthusiast and celebrity endorser for brands and products and has been vocal about issues like feminism and animal rights.
Which is why the Shilpa started her own fitness and health app (Simple Soulful) and has also funded a startup Mamaearth that sells mother and childcare products. The startups funded by Shilpa Shetty Kundra are:
Mamaearth was founded in 2016 by a couple Varun and Ghazal Alagh, the company is owned and operated by Honasa Consumer Pvt. Ltd. The company is known for its product line that includes toxin free body lotions, rash creams, shampoos, body wash, massage oils and even bug sprays which are curated for the children up to the age of five years.
The company concentrates on making products that are for stress relief, postpartum weight loss for new mothers and non-preservative products for lactation.
Shilpa Shetty with Varun and Ghazal Alagh the founders of Mamaearth
The company sells most its products on its own website and other online ecommerce platforms like Amazon, FirstCry, Nykaa, Flipkart and Paytm. Shilpa Shetty Kundra has funded over $250,000 to the startup in April of 2018 and has backed the company ever since.
In an interview Shilpa disclosed that she decided to fund the startup because it offered natural and chemical free nature of products. Over 90% of company’s sales are done online but are also available in more than 300 stores across cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi and are planning to expand to ten other cities in the country.
The company has its headquarters in Gurugram and has raised over Rs 6.5 crore in just the second round of funding by Fireside Ventures and other investors. It also managed to raise Rs 130 crore from the Sequoia Capital India, Fireside Ventures, Stellaris Venture Partners and Sharp Ventures.
It has so far acquired over 5 million new customers and aims on making the company over Rs 500 crore brand by 2023. The company also plans on launching more products and expanding operation to parts of Southeast Asia.
According to the founders Mamaearth, it is a pioneer in selling safer products curated specially for mothers and kids of India. The company is aiming to build a brand that is friendly to parents and intends to make lives of the mothers and pregnant woman better and beautiful. Mamaearth is also Asia 1st brand which sells the Made Safe Certified Products. Most the products are made by mothers as nobody else understands a baby’s needs like a mother does.
Which is why the company has a working panel of mothers who give genuine reviews to all the products. For the past 15 years the GDP per capita has become 4 times more especially in the urban cities, while the childcare has increased eight fold.
There has also been a rise in new mothers looking for customized products for themselves and their children. Mamaearth is helpful in reducing parental stress amongst young parents. In an interview, Varun Alagh disclosed how he got Shilpa Shetty Kundra to invest in the startup.
“The process started over a year back with finding ways to get a window with her which took nearly 3 months after sending many pitches. But after the meeting we gave her all our products to try it herself and on her son.” He also added that the actress did her own in-depth research on Mamaearth after which she went on to backing the startup as an equity investor.
Simple Soulful is a holistic wellness and Health App launched by Shilpa Shetty Kundra and designed by experts of Yoga, Exercise, Immunity and Diet Programs.
The 45 year old Bollywood actress made this app because she is a fitness enthusiast, has active lifestyle and lives by the philosophy of “Swasth Raho, Mast Raho” which translates to “Stay Healthy, Stay Happy.” The app encourages a healthy lifestyle and offers a customized goal based yoga and fitness programs.
An example of the Simple Soulful video by Shilpa Shetty
These programs are specifically designed to help its customers lose weight, improve flexibility, strengthen core muscles, tone arms and legs. They also have programs that will help customers with special ailments like focusing of diabetes, low and high blood pressure, immunity, sleep and stress management.
Simple Soulful has free and has easy to do yoga asanas with step by step instructions, other exercise, diet plans, recommendations and delicious yet nutritious recipes to maintain a healthy balance in life. The target audience of the app is working women and men but it also caters to young mothers and youngsters.
The features and pricing of the app
The cost of Simple Soulful is Rs. 499 for a month, Rs 999 Quarterly and Rs 2499 annually. The app/website also allows its customers to purchase single videos for a minimum cost of Rs 99.
These subscriptions give its customers an access to 60 plus yoga and meditation programs by experts, daily diet plans, recommendations, asanas, exercises and healthy recipes. The app is available for iOS 11.0 and Android 5.0 with a lifetime of access. The special features of simple soulful are:
The users of the app can work out with Shilpa Shetty Kundra as she is the one that performs them while being mentored by experts.
The workouts are designed in a way that it is easy, quick and home based that can be performed anywhere and anytime.
The programs help people in boosting their immunity especially during the Covid 19 pandemic.
The recipes require simple and less ingredients which are also highly nutritional.
Their special program made only for women, like exercising videos for pregnancy, post pregnancy weight loss and menstrual pain.
The app allows you to download programs and workout without Internet along with tracking and displaying their fitness journey.
Shilpa Shetty Kundra is a well-known yoga practitioner which is why the app has a whole section of yoga programs which made specifically for different levels like the beginners.
They also have an Office yoga section where working men and women can practice simple workouts around their office chair. Like the yoga videos the exercising videos also come with many difficulty levels and have an apt description of the benefits of each workout. Another main benefit is that once the videos are downloaded, you can keep up with your training with without data or Wifi.
Shilpa Shetty in an interview mentioned that she not tech savvy but made sure to work with the apple accelerator team to make sure that the interface of Simple Soulful is simple to navigate and easy to use.
The app is also on iPad and Apple watch integration and plans to integrate siri for voice commands. Shilpa loves the app and has put a lot of effort into making it, she has also shot for videos eight hours in one go.
According to Shilpa, “I started learning advanced yoga and have achieved my own fitness goals while working on the app”. Her point is that, If she can do it, so can you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Shilpa Shetty Kundra?
Shilpa Shetty Kundra is an Indian actress, film producer, dancer and also is known to be businesswomen and author.
What is the startup that is funded by Shilpa Shetty Kundra?
The startup that is funded by Shilpa Shetty Kundra is Mamaearth.
What is the fitness app of Shilpa Shetty Kundra?
The fitness app of Shilpa Shetty Kundra is Simple Soulful
What is Mamaearth?
Mamaearth is a startup that is known to sell mother and childcare products that are safe to use.
What is Simple Soulful?
Simple Soulful is a holistic wellness and Health App launched by Shilpa Shetty Kundra and designed by experts of Yoga, Exercise, Immunity and Diet Programs.
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Gone are the days when one had to rely on word of mouth to find a good doctor, or when one had to stand in queues to book an appointment with the doctor. Thanks to the online appointment booking platforms, finding the best doctors is now easier than never before. Through these platforms, one can find doctors specific to one’s health problem and book appointment in clicks.
One such platform that is simplifying the process of booking an appointment with the doctor and diagnostic centers isDocttocare. Moving a step forward this Bangalore based startup even arranges for transportation of the patient to the clinic if required, thus making good quality health care services more accessible.
StartupTalky interviewed Docttocare founder Sugandha to learn further about this startup.
Docttocare is an online healthcare service provider. Docttocare provides its users information about the best doctors, clinics, hospitals and diagnostic centers. The platform also offers virtual walkthroughs of the ambiance to showcase hospitality and their facilities. It makes booking appointments super easy and assures the confirmation of online appointment through call, SMS or email. Docttocare launched its services in 2018 at NASSCOM Bangalore.
Docttocare is one of the leading healthcare online portals that enable users from non-metro cities to access and book an appointment with doctors and hospitals located in major cities. Docttocare app handholds the users through the entire process of identifying the right doctors/hospitals and scheduling appointments on the desired date. Docttocare covers everything from dentist, gynecologist, dermatologist, ENT, ayurvedic and homeopathy.
Docttocare is making lives easy for doctors too. Docttocare helps the doctors increase the visibility of the services provided by them, and also provides facilities such as seamless integration with online payment. It also lets the doctors view patient records from anywhere, remind the patients about the appointment and manage the clinic through Docttocare dashboard.
Global Appointment Scheduling Software Market
The global appointment scheduling market was valued at 160 million USD in 2017 and is expected to surpass 360 million USD by the end of 2023. Again, the doctor’s appointment booking software market alone is expected to grow at a rate of 16.56% for the next five years, i.e. till 2023.
Sugandha Agarwal is the founder and CEO of Docttocare
Founder & CEO of Docttocare
Docttocare is a single female founder company. Sugandha Agarwal is the founder and CEO of Docttocare. An electrical, electronics & communication engineer by qualification, Sugandha worked with reputed organizations like Infosys, Oracle and Google Maps before starting Docttocare.
I do everything except writing codes. Jokes apart, driving partnerships with hospital brands, building end-user acquisition strategies, spending time with product positioning, etc are key responsibilities, says Sugandha Agarwal.
Docttocare has 15 members of team right now and looking for expanding in a couple of months.
Docttocare – Name and Logo
The name Docttocare has been derived from ‘Doctor to care’.
Instant online ambulance booking – This feature allows the users to book an ambulance online instantly. Once booked, the user can track the live status of the fleet, the arrival time of the ambulance the expected time it will take to travel.
Blood Bank Facility – Lets users track the availability of bold groups with the hospital.
Manages health reports – Docttocare lets the users search, compare, evaluate and also share health record and prescription with doctors, thus making the platform user-friendly.
Simplifies the process of shortlisting a doctor or medical center – Docttocare allows the users to choose the best of doctors and clinics or hospitals based on ratings and helps the users in making an informed decision. It also provides a virtual 3D panoramic tour of the hospital thus making the users get a fair idea of the hospital or clinic even before visiting the place.
Docttocare also offers free cancellation and re-scheduling of appointments.
Docttocare has a simple commission – based revenue model. While the services are free for the patients, it charges a 10% commission from the hospitals.
Docttocare – Funding and Investors
Docttocare raised seed funding worth INR 4 Crore in May 2019.
Funding Date
Funding Stage
Funding Amount
Investor
May 2019
Seed
INR 4 Crore
Krishna Kumar Devnally
Docttocare – User Acquisition
Getting the initial set of customers required great effort. The Docttocare team roamed around Bangalore and enrolled the small clinics.
“We used to visit at least 20 clinics per day. After some time when we started getting revenue from appointments then we realized Tier 2 cities people are more keen to get treated by reputed doctors, and they need transport as well, which we tried to solve”, recalls Sugandha.
Currently, Docttocare is focusing on tier 2 and tier 3 cities to provide access to prime hospitals and connecting them with ambulance service and proving stay also.
Docttocare – Startup Challenges
Docttocare | Team Hustle
“Startup journeys are full of challenges, which to be honest, I didn’t realize before taking the plunge. Thanks to the media, who always show the shiny side of it. Keeping professional and personal life separate & fulfilling is one of the biggest challenges and I had to let one of them go for a few years.” said Sugandha.
Building the team, acquiring an initial set of customers/partners, honing her selling skills were part of the early days’ challenges for Sugandha. Besides, though she had a brief coding background and was able to keep up with the engineering/product team but being in sync with them fully took her some time.
Challenges like customer acquisition, revenue were there since day one, but Docttocare now has a qualified team to take care of these aspects. Another major problem was raising funds.
“Raising funds was the other (good) problem we solved. While starting up, I did not realize that I’d have the inherent disadvantage of being a solo female founder. I got my reality check, when one of the prominent angel investors with a massive following on social media, mentioned this fact bluntly to me. They didn’t even delve into business and rejected the deal outright. But being a female founder gives you additional strength (in terms of team management and creativity), which not many investors realize. Incidentally, I met with our investor/mentor a year ago and he decided to support us” narrates Sugandha.
Along with being the investor of Docttocare, Krishnakumar also plays the role of a mentor for the company. He is the Director of M-Power Solutions.
Docttocare – Growth
Through its excellent services, Docttocare has been successful to slowly gain trust from doctors and patients alike.
The company has enrolled all the major hospitals like Apollo, Manipal, Medanta and many more.
Docttocare is now getting around 300 + appointments per day.
4000+ medical tests have been done through Docttocare.
500+ clinics, 100+ hospitals and 2000+ doctors are registered with it.
Docttocare – Future Plans
Docttocare is planning to bring many positive changes in the healthcare scenario of India.
Emphasizing on Docttocare’s future plans, Sugandha said “I want to take healthcare in India to a much higher level. We have a dearth of doctors in this country and the patient count is undoubtedly increasing. People often ignore their minor health-issues, either due to lack of healthcare service or because of effort/cost that may go into addressing it.”
Awareness of health issues would be their next goal. How can they help you to be healthy without investing much? Something as simple as cutting refined sugar & unhealthy fat from the diet, eating your dinner early in the day, etc can go a long way in improving the fitness standard.
Making quality healthcare accessible to masses has been the company’s dream and they are very early in solving it. Currently, they have to move people to let them enjoy the benefits of high-quality services, but the eventual goal would be to send services wherever they are. Training local people on healthcare services, equipping them with the right tools and making them work under the supervision of qualified practitioners is the way forward.
Who doesn’t love to stay fit? While everyone wishes to live a healthy and active life free from ailments, owing to the unhealthy and inappropriate lifestyle that most of us follow these days, we become susceptible to many diseases. Knowingly or unknowingly we adopt many unhealthy habits which may prove detrimental to our health in the long run. We lack motivation and guidance required to maintain a healthy lifestyle. While all of us cannot afford the luxury of hiring our own personal nutritionist, wouldn’t you love it if someone is always by your side taking care as you are about to eat? If yes, then there is some good news. PurpleTeal, a startup which is operating both in India and abroad, brings to you ‘Tweak & Eat’ an app that will give you practical and real-time advice on how to tweak your meals to make it healthier. Tweak & Eat ® was launched in 2017 and is designed to help users with weight-loss and management of diet-related health issues.
PurpleTeal is an established mobile Health (mHealth) service provider. It operates an automated, personalized mHealth messaging platform for Telcos and consumers. PurpleTeal’s mHealth platform and apps engage subscribers to take better care of their health and wellness, by educating them and prompting them to take appropriate and timely health actions.
PurpleTeal’s core business is a smartphone app ‘Tweak & Eat’ which offers just-in-time meal advice to subscribers. The company has headquarters in Foremont (California) and Chennai (India).
The company’s vision is to ‘Keep Everyone Healthy, Looking Good & Feeling Great!’ and their Mission is to ‘Transform Health & Wellness across the Globe!.
Even people who are aware that diet is important for good health, find it difficult to remember and follow their diet plans or principles (e.g. eat fewer carbs). They need specific, real-time advice and hand-holding at the ‘point of consumption’. PurpleTeal’s ‘Tweak & Eat’ App, makes it easier for people to make long-term dietary changes through incremental changes to each meal through personalized ‘tweaks’. Each meal is a ‘teachable moment’. ‘Tweak & Eat’ makes it simple by relieving people of the onerous work of remembering, recording, counting, tracking or analyzing their food intake: Users just need to send a picture of the meal in front of them and the nutritionists will tell them how to make that meal healthier for their body profile.
Mr. Narayanan Ram and Mr. Anand Subra are the founders of PurpleTeal.
Mr. Narayanan Ram, is the CEO of PurpleTeal. He is an experienced entrepreneur with deep roots in the information technology industry. By education, he is an electrical engineering graduate. He graduated in 1993 and joined Cirrus Logic. From 1993-1996, he worked in Cirrus Logic holding different posts. In 1996, at the time of leaving Cirrus Logic, Mr. Ram was Director of Video Telecom Products.
In 1997, Mr. Ram founded SeeItFirst Inc., a video software tools company. From conceptualizing, architecting and implementing the first ‘interactive frame-based video streaming technology’ to receiving patents for the same, Mr. Ram has a lot to his credit. Besides, he was also successful in attracting investments from NBC/GE, MKS Ventures, and Deutsche Bank. He launched the first product in 1998 and built up a blue-chip customer base with over 100 implementations in the US, Japan and India. Mr. Ram formed and guided a strong management team and Board of Directors for SeeItFirst. SeeItFirst was acquired by the UB Group in 2001. Mr. Ram continued as CEO of SeeItFirst until 2004.
Dr. Anand Subra, is the Chief Knowledge Officer of PurpleTeal. He is an IIT alumnus and is a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He is the co-author of many journal papers and holds US and foreign patents. He is responsible for new product development and providing knowledge support for strategy, marketing and delivery initiatives.
Anand previously worked with IBM for 20 years in various departments like sales, marketing, consulting, and strategy and business development. Anand helped a number of multinational firms in successfully developing and implementing their business strategies and operational initiatives. He led the business development of IBM innovation management services and also spearheaded these services in the healthcare industry.
The founders Narayanan and Anand were always looking for new ways to improve people’s lives and periodically meet in some locatioThe founders Narayanan and Anand were always looking for new ways to improve people’s lives and periodically met in some location to brainstorm new ideas. During one such meeting in Silicon Valley in 2015, they were discussing the obesity and overweight epidemic and looking at various sites and apps that were addressing the fitness/wellness space. They wanted to make a difference to people with weight-related health issues.
Narayanan and Anand were struck by the level of effort required to use some of the other health & wellness apps and felt that these apps appealed more to ‘power users’, who used these apps for record-keeping and validation from other users. Most likely, they had already established a ‘healthy’ diet and exercise habits and were using fitness apps to further hone their habits. Power users were deeply engaged with the quantitative aspects of the app and reveled in data entry, analysis and feedback. In contrast, ‘average users’ would consider these requirements to be very onerous and were likely to stop using the apps in a short while. This made them feel that they could come up with a much easier approach, one that would appeal to the average user, and require far less effort, but also provide useful functionality for power users.
Taking a step further, Narayanan and Anand consulted with their friends and others about what they would want in an ideal weight-loss app, and what they have experienced with other apps. They found out that what most people needed was not just information and actionable tips/instructions, they also needed hand-holding. They felt they were left to their own devices at meal times, especially in certain situations like a buffet, eating out with a group, someone pushing unhealthy food, etc.
They realized that while it is one thing to ‘know’ that curtailing carb intake leads to weight-loss, it is totally another thing to take the appropriate actions when sitting at a meal filled with all sorts of carb-temptations! What would really help was telling them which items to avoid and which to eat, and how much. This would make things far easier.
They also observed that while existing apps placed a lot of emphasis on recording and analyzing every morsel eaten by the user, informing the user to the nth degree of detail, but not really motivating any lasting changes in behavior. Also, these apps coached users ‘after-the-fact’, i.e. the app would tell them what all they ate and how they could do better next time – after they had already eaten their meals. Users would have to remember the instructions and make sure they followed them – all on their own! These made Anand and Narayanan feel that they could do a whole lot better by hand-holding the users as and when they were actually eating their meals. They wanted to design something which would free the users from remembering the instructions from their last meal and from entering any data. Thus the idea behind ‘Tweak & Eat” was formed.
Anand and Narayanan soon started Executing this idea. They analyzed a large number of papers and journal articles as well through which they found some very interesting information. One is that people lost some weight on almost every ‘diet’, but were unable to sustain them; the lost weight invariably came right back! This is a widely recognized phenomenon, aptly summarized by American humorist Erma Bombeck: “In two decades I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.”
Mark Twain, another American humorist, once said: “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.” The same can be said for weight-loss!
Another very surprising finding that stood out was that exercise did not play an important enough role in weight-loss! Diet played a far greater role and therein lay the rub because people find it very difficult to sustain drastic changes to their diets over the long term.
The PurpleTeal team started developing the app based upon the various findings. They laid out the technical design and requirements, applied for US and International patents (still pending), and began development. The team came up with an approach that would require very little user effort (most of the work would be done by nutritionists). – it would allow people to eat what they normally did, but with a ‘Tweak’ (meal-modification) under the guidance of nutritionists.
All the user would have to do is to take a picture of their meal and send it to ‘Tweak & Eat’. The rest backend activity would be manned by qualified nutritionists. Within a minute, the nutritionists would send back a tweak. No data entry, no remembering anything… it couldn’t be made any easier than this!
The name Tweak and Eat came from the idea that – the user will eat what he/she would normally eat and just ‘tweak’ (make incremental changes) the meal a bit to suit the user’s body profile and achieve his/her specific goals.
What is PurpleTeal
The Company’s core business is a smartphone app and Service called ‘Tweak & Eat’. ‘Tweak & Eat’ aims to empower health-conscious subscribers with ‘Just-in-time’ meal advice (i.e. ‘Tweaks’) from nutritionists who analyze the nutritive content of each meal and make suggestions for improvement.
‘Tweak & Eat’ helps subscribers make informed food choices and changes for the meal they are just about to eat, based on their individual body parameters and specific health goals. All the subscriber has to do is to take a picture of their food plate and send it to us using the App. Tweak & Eat nutritionists then view the plate and make appropriate portion control, food swapping or eating sequence recommendations in less than a minute. They may also make suggestions for future meals, taking advantage of meal-time ‘teachable moments’ to educate subscribers about healthy eating.
Tweak & Eat also supports integration with devices like Fitbit, iWatch, etc. and enables personalized reminders to be set for breakfast, lunch, dinner and other meal-times.
‘Tweak & Eat’ is training and using Tweakyfai (its proprietary AI platform) to help nutritionists do a better job of giving real-time advice and information to users. Tweakyfai also automates some activities such as generating nutrition labels and escalating exceptions.
Important features of ‘Tweak & Eat’ App are–
My EDR (Electronic Diet Record) – It contains all the current and past tweaks of the user along with the nutritionist’s comments and nutrition labels. It also shows the rating the user gave to each tweak.
Nutrition Labels – It helps users see the macronutrient contents of every meal. These labels are created instantly by Tweakyfai, PrpleTeal’s AI platform.
Recipe Wall– Users can find healthy recipes here.
Tweak Wall – User can share the tweak from My EDR on the Tweak Wall
My Nutrition – Helps users monitor their calorie and micro-nutrient intake trend.
My Fitness – This features allows ‘Tweak & Eat’ to be connected to other health and fitness related devices like fitbit and iWatch.
Some premium services included in the Tweak & Eat app are–
Weight Loss Service– Here the user gets a personalized diet plan from a nutritionist assigned to him/her.
AIDP (AI based Diet Plan) – under this service the user gets personalized diet plans generated by the AI platform tweakify. Besides, the user also gets to chat with nutritionists under this plan.
Twetox– it offers personalized detox plans to the user.
Besides ‘Tweak & Eat’, PurpleTeal has another app named ‘My Health Assistant’, which help people to maintain better health by guiding users to prevent ‘at risk’ conditions and help manage diagnosed conditions better.
Some other mHealth messaging services provided by PurpleTeal are–
Live Well – It provides daily health tips, periodic risk awareness alerts and tips on how to prevent diseases.
Lose Weight – It provides daily tips to lose weight.
Quit Smoke – Provides daily tips to quit smoking based on established behavioral change models.
Be CALM – Provides tips on stress relief and stress handling.
Well Woman – Provides tips on women’s health
Healthy Heart – Provides tips to manage or prevent cardiovascular diseases.
Prevent Diabetes – Provides tips to prevent diabetes. Build awareness of early signs and symptoms of diabetes.
Manage Diabetes– Provides tips for long term diabetes self-management
Pregnancy – Provides daily tips to to-be moms on various aspects of pregnancy
Prevent Cancer– Provides daily tips and information about risk factors and symptoms of cancer. And provides guidance regarding how to prevent cancer.
Food Plate with Nutrition Labels
PurpleTeal – Launching Startup
PurpleTeal’s core product ‘Tweak & Eat’ app was first launched in India, followed by Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Kuwait and USA, Besides, it launched the App & Service on Google Play Store and Apple Store in 2017.
Tweak & Eat runs its services on a freemium model. While the base app and services are free, fee is charged for the premium services. Pricing ranges from INR 49 to INR 3,999 in India.
PurpleTeal – User Acquisition
As said by Narayanan, for ‘Tweak &Eat’ PurpleTeal got its first 100 customers just through word of mouth publicity. PurpleTeal also promotes its apps and services through Google Adwords and with the help of its Telco partners.
Google Adwords is very effective in reaching millions of potential subscribers. We have existing relationships with Telcos from our ‘Health Tips’ line of business, and through them, can reach 100’s of millions of potential subscribers. Once we get to that level, it becomes easier to grow because of the heightened visibility.
PurpleTeal – Competitors
Though there are many apps related to health, ‘Tweak & Eat’ is quite unique from the rest. It’s simple, real-time, meal modification advice from nutritionists at the time of consumption is a feature that no other app provides.
We will make it difficult for others to duplicate our app & service by speeding up our response time and making the nutritionist’s advice easy to act upon and instructive for future meals.
PurpleTeal – Growth
‘Tweak & Eat’ has been able to gain popularity among its target audience. The app’s popularity and growth is shown by the following facts-
The app has gained popularity in different countries apart from India like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and the USA.
The App caters to the daily meal-time needs of more than 500,000 users.
‘Tweak & Eat’ ranks as the 4th trending App on Google Play Store in the health & wellness category and is one among the top performing health & wellness channels according to Youtube with the engagement increasing 300% month-on-month, over the last three months.
Future plans for the next 2-3 years is to rapidly grow the installed base and increase user engagement. We are now in the testing stages of an AI nutritionist that can reliably (more than 90%) identify a large number of foods. Our AI nutritionist will get better over time, as we continue to train it with ‘real-world’ images of meals sent by our users. This is an important point because training an AI nutritionist using stock images is easier but not very reliable.
