StartupTalky

Tag: Health & Wellness

  • Wellversed: A Wellness Startup Helping in Creating and Scaling Consumer Brands

    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 Wellversed.

    The demand for health and wellness products is steadily growing. Research shows that an average Indian millennial spends over 3000 per month on their fitness and wellness. Digitalization has been quite influential in generating awareness of the common public about human wellness. The growing wellness industry has attracted many brands to come up with good and genuine wellness products. Entrepreneurs and startups are focusing on developing authentic wellness products that could contribute to the spectrum of human wellness.

    Wellversed is a startup that helps in building and scaling the business in the wellness industry. They help in accelerating the growth of wellness brands. Popular Indian cricketer Yuvraj Singh is associated with Wellversed in its startup journey.

    Listen to Aanan Khurma telling the story of Wellversed in an interview with StartupTalky on Epic Brands Podcast

    Read further to know about Wellversed, its founders, products & services, business model, and more.

    Wellversed – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Wellversed
    Headquarters Gurgaon, Haryana
    Industry B2C and Wellness
    Founder Aanan Khurma, Aditya Seth, and Ripunjay Chachan
    Founded 2019
    Total Funding Raised $3.2 Million
    Website wellversed.in

    Wellversed – About
    Wellversed – Industry
    Wellversed – Founders and Team
    Wellversed – The Idea and Startup Story
    Wellversed – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    Wellversed – Products & Services
    Wellversed – Business Model
    Wellversed – Customer Acquisition
    Wellversed – Challenges Faced
    Wellversed – Funding
    Wellversed – Competitors
    Wellversed – Recognition and Achievements
    Wellversed – Future Plans

    Wellversed – About

    Wellversed is a full-stack accelerator for wellness brands. Wellversed startup accelerate wellness brands from their infancy to building them into strong world-class brands that enable better wellbeing. They enable founders to build genuine wellness brands by accelerating sales growth, strengthening the product-market fit, improving the supply chain, providing investment support, building the brand story, and improving key metrics, and M&A opportunities.

    Short term goal of the startup is to accelerate 1000 wellness brands by 2025, invest in 100 wellness brands by 2025, and acquire 10 wellness brands by 2025. It has a long-term vision to maximize human wellness by enabling genuine wellness brands.

    Wellversed – Industry

    The global wellness market is at more than $1.5 trillion per year, with annual growth of 5 to 10%. In fact, the rate of growth of the wellness industry is in double digits in the developing economy. 60% of this market is contributed by wellness brands while the remaining is contributed by services.

    Wellversed – Founders and Team

    Wellversed - Founders with Yuvraj Singh
    Wellversed – Founders with Yuvraj Singh

    Aanan was a fellow at the Stanford Biodesign School in 2012. As an alumnus of Stanford Biodesign, Aanan Khurma used to conduct a lot of Design Thinking workshops to disseminate the ideology of Stanford D-School to college students. It was during the organization of one such workshop that Aanan met Aditya Seth who was an industrial design student inclined toward designing manufacturing assembly lines. Both of them launched a brand together called Unsnack which was one of the early D2C brands in the Indian ecosystem. Both of them were later joined by Ripunjay Chachan who was Aanan’s batchmate at Stanford Biodesign. Yuvraj Singh was a consumer of the products crafted and traded by Wellversed before he decided to invest in Wellversed and later become a part of the core team of Wellversed.

    Aanan is the CEO of the Company and is primarily responsible for Business Intelligence, Defining Long Term Goals, and probably one of the only CEOs who directly leads the Human Resources department. Aditya Seth leads the supply chain while Ripunjay Chachan leads Business Growth. Yuvraj Singh is the chief evangelist and flag bearer of the message of health and wellbeing.

    As of June 2022, Wellversed has a total of 150 employees.

    Wellversed – The Idea and Startup Story

    The company started out as a personal quest to maximize healthspan. The human body is designed to live up to 120 years of age but most people become dysfunctional by 65-70 years of age. Aanan Khurma realized that people can live a disease-free life of quality, vigor, and intensity if their lifestyle is right. He realized that consumer brands are not optimizing for the long-term well-being of human beings. This led him to launch his first brand called Unsnack. Subsequently, he launched several brands like Ketofy, Ovego, and Wellcore to cater to different use-cases of wellness.

    These brands were unified under the common umbrella of Wellversed Full-Stack Accelerator structure evolved to help great founders create genuine wellness brands.

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    Wellversed Logo
    Wellversed Logo

    There is a very interesting story behind the name of the Company. Aanan’s first startup – Hansure – was funded by Microsoft Ventures. When he was going through the journey of formulating what is now Wellversed he was exchanging ideas with the Director of Microsoft Venture Fund. The Director asked Aanan to send a small note about his startup in order to make a connection with a probable seed investor. As an interim thought, Aanan penned down the name Wellversed in order for this connection to be made and the conversation to proceed further. The Company was never renamed although the name is difficult to pronounce and several stakeholders have pointed out that it’s an awkward name. Since Wellversed platform is not primarily consumer-facing, they never thought it would be relevant to rename the Company.

    Wellversed – Products & Services

    Wellversed Product - Ketofy
    Wellversed Product – Ketofy

    Wellversed is a tech-enabled full-stack accelerator for wellness brands. They assist founders in their journeys to build and scale genuine wellness brands. A great consumer brand is built through only THREE things:

    • A solution that serves a need.
    • A product that is great.
    • A brand story to carry the message to the masses.

    In a typical scenario, running a brand has so many operational components to it that a founder is not able to focus on the core aspects of creating a brand. Wellversed relieves founders from all the operational hassle of selling their products. This includes eCommerce Operations, Performance Marketing, Listing Operations, Warehousing & Logistics, etc. This allows founders to build genuine products to solve a real problem and craft a story that resonates. Wellversed is accelerating 40 wellness brands as of June 2022.

    Wellversed – Business Model

    The business model of Wellversed is centred on accelerating brands and charging them a percentage of their growth revenue. Their EBITA margins are close to 18-20%.

    Wellversed – Customer Acquisition

    They didn’t have a website for 6 months after they started selling to end consumers. They primarily relied on third-party eCommerce channels like Amazon.

    Their only hack was discipline and diligence. Most companies talk about consumer centricity but Aanan and Aditya actually spoke to most consumers to whom they sold. Back then, sellers could access the phone numbers of consumers who ordered via Amazon.

    Wellversed – Challenges Faced

    They took a very unique approach to create a group of brands that maximise human wellness. When they started, this concept and way of building multiple brands were not well understood. The toughest part was the impact that people’s limited understanding had on their own mindset.

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    Wellversed – Funding

    As of 2022, Wellversed has raised 3.2 Million USD through Jubilant Foodworks, Yuvraj Singh, other entities, and angels.

    Wellversed – Competitors

    Some top competitors of Wellversed are:

    • Mensa Brands
    • Global Bees
    • Evenflow
    • Powerhouse91
    • Thrasio
    • SellerX
    • Perch
    • Heydey

    Wellversed – Recognition and Achievements

    Their achievement is the culture of the Company. They believe that great things are achieved through distributed intelligence and the first step to that is creating trust on an individual level. Systems like beehives, ant colonies, and the human brain are regarded as some of the most complicated structures in the universe. The commonality between these biological systems is that they do not have a single intelligence centre. The fact is that the most cooperative, intelligent, and admirable biological systems in the universe have been created by distributed intelligence. This is noteworthy because an individual needs to operate by a minimal set of rules in a distributed intelligence system.

    Wellversed – Future Plans

    The Future of Wellversed is to evolve into a City of wellness entrepreneurs crafting brands for true maximisation of human wellness.

    FAQs

    When was Wellversed founded?

    Wellversed was founded in 2019.

    Who is the founder of Wellversed?

    Aanan Khurma, Aditya Seth, and Ripunjay Chachan are the co-founders of Wellversed.

    Who are the competitors of Wellversed?

    Some top competitors of Wellversed are:

    • Mensa Brands
    • Global Bees
    • Evenflow
    • Powerhouse91
    • Thrasio
    • SellerX
    • Perch
    • Heydey

    Has Wellversed raised funding?

    Wellversed has raised funding of $3.2 Million.

  • How Indian Employers Can Help Provide Better Mental Health Care to Employees

    The article is contributed by Marut Bhardwaj – Country Head, Potential Project.

    Compassion is the willingness to improve the lives of others around you.

    Rather than merely providing the bare necessities to keep employees happy and productive so that the company can make more money, a compassionate leader wants to help them thrive. In addition to having a long-term vision, compassionate leadership requires wisdom in directing the organization towards a human way of working and taking necessary initiatives to guarantee employee well-being in the present moment.

    Traditional business KPIs are no longer enough in an era of increasing healthcare awareness. India’s working-age population is rapidly approaching 500 million people. Each of these workers will expect that their employer will cover the majority of the costs of their own and their families’ medical care. What was formerly considered a nice-to-have perk by certain companies is now considered a must-have.

    Since good healthcare is employees’ need, giving appropriate attention to employees’ physical and mental health, therefore, is a big part of compassionate leadership. Especially in this era, where yet another wave of the pandemic has clocked in, leaders have a critical role in helping their employees navigate the turbulence of COVID-19.

    The importance of employee healthcare for organizations
    What measures can leaders take to improve employee health
    Conclusion

    The importance of employee healthcare for organizations

    Your employees’ health and well-being is not just helpful to them; it generates an efficient and productive working environment that benefits your organisation at large.

    Health-related absenteeism and rising healthcare expenditures provide a persistent problem to companies. Employers in the United States, where health benefits are prevalent, pay $575 billion a year in health care expenditures due to poor employee health. Employee absenteeism, chronic ailments that limit production and workers’ compensation are all contributors to this expense.

    To be clear, these absences are not solely a result of disease. Poor physical and mental health can lead to a host of problems, including high levels of stress and burnout, as well as a lack of motivation and enthusiasm on the part of employees. In 2019, the World Health Organization predicted that between 2012 and 2030, mental health disorders in India will cost the country a whopping $1.03 trillion in economic losses.

    Thus, employee health and productivity are linked: Healthier minds and bodies lead to greater levels of optimism, originality, and drive. Care for your workers means:

    • Employees who feel cared for and valued
    • Increased motivation and fulfilment in the work place
    • Reduced absenteeism
    • Retention of employees
    • A positive working environment with constructive interactions between employees and managers

    What measures can leaders take to improve employee health

    After the outbreak of the pandemic, many leaders have started including additional advantages at the workplace, such as primary healthcare, regular testing and wellness programmes. Leaders have realised that small changes can go a long way toward making the workplace a healthy and uplifting place to work. Here are some more measures they can employ in pursuit of the same goal:

    Encouraging your staff to participate in health and wellness initiatives.

    All facets of an employee’s health are considered in an integrated wellness programme, which can include PTO, focus workshops, yoga sessions. These programmes encompass physical, mental, as well as emotional health of the employees. Providing annual employee health screening tests to make your employees aware of underlying health issues and help them avoid larger health problems in the future is also a part of these initiatives.

    Such initiatives can lead to an 80% enhancement in organisational performance if done correctly. Though these initiatives may appear more complex to integrate into the workplace, the expense of unhealthy personnel is ultimately a greater problem.

    Build a culture of health

    Encourage your employees to exercise on a regular basis. Motivate them to join jogging clubs, gain access to gyms and other facilities, or just make little daily decisions that benefit their health, such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator.

    Provide enough room for your employees to breathe and be present. Access to natural light, comfortable office seats, and ergonomic workstations all help to keep your staff engaged and healthy.

    Leaders must create a work environment that promotes mental health through compassionate leadership, frequent breaks, one-on-one conversations, and other such measures.

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    Incorporate mindfulness into your wellness programmes

    When it comes to a more comprehensive approach to your company’s employee health programme, mindfulness is a good place to begin.

    Despite the fact that mindfulness isn’t difficult to develop or practise, it might be tough for novices to know where to begin. An ideal starting point is a company-sponsored course in mindfulness, meditation, or yoga.

    It is possible to practise mindfulness in any setting, including a cubicle, a desk, or even a conference room. Leaders can also engage workers by including some mindfulness exercises into their next meeting or outing or directing them into some easy breathing exercises or yoga positions at the end or beginning of a meeting to help them focus.

    Conclusion

    It’s common for firms and organisations to be unsure of how to identify and cultivate a compassionate leadership style and workplace culture. By focusing on their employees’ most basic need – good health – they can kickstart the transformation to a compassionate workplace.

  • Success Story of ForMen: Wellness Journey Improving Quality of Life for Men

    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 ForMen.

    ForMen is a wellness startup founded by medical specialist. The starup is focused towards men’s health and wellness products. They offer variety of products ranging from general wellness to weight management, eye, hair and more. Their USP of products is – Synergistic action with high absorbability into the body. The startup is doing quite well with its unique concept of medically researched wellness products for men.

    Let’s know more about ForMen – founders, products & services, business model, and the complete startup story.

    ForMen – Company Highlights

    Startup Name ForMen
    Headquarters Hyderabad
    Industry Health & Wellness
    Founded 2021
    Founders Dr. Lalitha Reddy and Sreeram Reddy
    Website www.formen.health

    ForMen – About
    ForMen – Industry
    ForMen – Founders and Team
    ForMen – Idea & Startup Story
    ForMen – Mission and Vision
    ForMen – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    ForMen – Business Model & Revenue Model
    ForMen – Product & Services
    ForMen – Startup Launch
    ForMen – Challenges Faced
    ForMen – Funding
    ForMen – Future Plans
    ForMen – Recognition and Achievements
    ForMen – Growth
    ForMen – FAQs

    ForMen – About

    ForMen is an online holistic Health & Wellness platform for men. It provides wellness products & online doctor consultations. The Health & Wellness startup was founded in 2021 by Dr. Lalitha Reddy and Sreeram Reddy at Hyderabad.

    ForMen – Industry

    The Men’s health & Wellness industry has gained prominence over the past few years. The Men’s wellness market has more than doubled in India in the last 3-4 years and is all set to grow at 16-17% annually. Most of the growth has happened in the grooming sector. A significant growth may be seen in the supplements sector too in the coming 5 years. Increased willingness of the millennial generation to discuss non-critical health issues, combined with increased awareness and purchasing power will push the nutraceutical category to higher growth rates in the coming years.

    Health & Wellness industry is one of the most stable & time tested industry. With the present day lifestyles, increased incidence of lifestyle diseases, newly evolving infections, increased burden of stress and obesity etc the need for wellness, fitness and health will only keep growing. Awareness and interest of people towards wellness will surely rise, so will the adoption of good practices. Wellness industry is growing steadily but surely in the years to come. The startup focus will be on natural, safe and effective products as compared to chemicals.

    They aim to carve a niche for themselves in this category with their unique, natural, safe and effective products that are formulated by doctors & pharma experts. They look at the entire country as their market. Children, adults and geriatric population, everyone from Day 0 to Day 100 will do better with supplements. A just born baby needs Vit D supplementation so will a 100 old centenarian. Bringing awareness is the key. They not only had a look at the market research statistics etc, but they also knew from Pan-India colleagues’ experience as well as from surveys and scientific articles, the extent of lifestyle disease burden in India and projected numbers in the next 10 years. This combined data was enough to convince about the huge need for genuine and effective supplements.

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    ForMen – Founders and Team

    Dr. Lalitha Reddy - ForMen Founder
    Dr. Lalitha Reddy – ForMen Founder

    Dr. Lalitha Reddy and Sreeram Reddy are the Co-founders of ForMen. They share almost the same vision and passion. They are highly committed to quality.

    Sreeram is a serial entrepreneur with a vast and successful experience. He is a graduate of Purdue University, a very passionate and motivated person, who loves to build and nurture companies.

    Dr. Lalitha Reddy, is a medical specialist with over 25 years of experience and an alumni of prestigious institutions like JIPMER, NIMS, Osmania General Hospital and ISB. She is the former Vice President of Yashoda Group of Hospitals and presently is Vice President of Telemedicine Society of India – Telangana Chapter. She is a very accomplished academic and scientific trailblazer with many awards and gold medals to her credit. She has many scientific research articles published in various national and international journals, delivered over hundreds of lectures both in India and abroad and is an author of two books.

    Her vast experience along with a deep understanding of patient problems and psychology has led her to pave the path for ForMen & ForKids along with her colleagues.

    The Core team of ForMen consists of experienced Doctors & Pharmacologists who are well aware of the health & wellness issues existing in the society as well as, have profound knowledge of complex body mechanisms, supplements & drug formulations and kinetics of absorption, utilization, effectivity, dosage, synergy and side effects of various supplements/drugs/molecules in the body.

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    ForMen – Idea & Startup Story

    Having worked in hospitals for the last almost 30 years, the have seen that a huge proportion of sickness could be prevented, if only people focused on preventive health and wellness. In the early days of the pandemic, they had first hand experience of seeing peoples’ panic, different degrees of severity of illness based on age and immune status of a patient and of course the sudden appearance of many ‘so called Immune boosters’ in the market, mostly of poor quality and inadequate / over dosages. The consequences of the un-informed, unaware & gullible people falling prey to various kinds of misinformation also did not escape to their notice. So, their team decided to embark on a journey of Preventive Health & Wellness, where they focus on supplementing nutrients in order to help improve the quality of life of people.

    They initially focused on men because men are usually hesitant to approach a doctor or get professional advice for wellness issues. They do not prefer to discuss their performance, sleep, stress, weight or another issues. Also there has been a significant increase in men’s health issues over the last 1-2 decades. Ex-Testosterone levels in men have reduced over the past 2 decades. Sperm counts of men have declined and infertility issues have also risen significantly in men. So has the incidence of Stress and related mental health problems.

    So they, as doctors and experts felt that they could contribute significantly by creating a non-judgmental and discrete platform for men which offers genuine, effective & safe formulations in the right combinations and dosages.

    The team were aware of the issues that they wanted to help solve, they also had the knowledge of formulations, so all they had to do was to partner with ingredient suppliers and manufacturers who had similar conviction towards quality & safety that they had. They travelled extensively for factory visits and interacted with various manufactures/suppliers before they chose the best, who aligned with their vision and mission. After that came the website development, branding, warehousing, last mile delivery partners etc. The entire journey was a humongous learning for us.

    Dr. Laltha Reddy – ForMen Founder talking about Stress

    ForMen – Mission and Vision

    Vision of ForMen – To be the most trusted health & wellness partner, offering high quality wellness products that are a part of the wellness journey of all Indian men.

    Mission of ForMen – To promote wellness, preventive health and encourage discussions on health issues in men.

    In the short term, they wish to firmly plant ForMen as a trusted brand that provides expert guidance and genuine, effective and safe products of unique formulations.

    In the long term, they wish to grow in the wellness space and become a household name. They foresee expansion in product line as well as international presence. Focus will also be in spreading awareness about wellness, sickness prevention and overall wellbeing.

    The Core belief of this experienced team is that preventive health & wellness is extremely important to improve quality of life and prevent sickness. Simple tweaking in lifestyle and supplementing diet with the correct nutraceuticals having the correct ingredients in the right dosages will significantly improve the energy, sleep quality, performance, weight issues, fertility, and other aspects of physical & mental health. They also believe in spreading awareness about the importance of preventive aspects of health, the importance of wellness enabling people to live a life of Quality & Happiness.

    ForMen Logo
    ForMen Logo

    ForMen logo and Taglines are very simple, direct & reflect what the brand offers.

    Since the team wanted to start with Men’s wellness products – The name ForMen was quite literal and fortunately available for us. Tagline ‘ For all things men’ simply followed the logo. Since their kids products were exclusive for kids, the logo ForKids was also designed on similar lines. The tagline ‘ForKids with smart moms ‘was also very apt and simple.

    ForMen – Product & Services

    All ForMen products presently belong to the following categories:

    1. Performance
    2. Sleep
    3. Skin
    4. Weight management
    5. Stress
    6. GUT Health
    7. Eye health
    8. Immunity
    9. General Wellness
    10. Hair

    Innovation is seen in the form of formulations, bioavailability & safety. They have a unique combination of herbs, vitamins & minerals that are essential for the body in the process that the product is designed to improve. Ideal effective dosages are very important for a supplement to work effectively. Synergistic action with high absorbability into the body are also the USP’s of the products. They have worked towards maximum efficiency of the product in the body, aligned as per the body’s requirements. The high concentration of Bio actives is another USP. They wish to achieve a balance between high quality & affordability.

    ForMen – Business Model & Revenue Model

    Please brief us on the business and revenue model. Do include pricing range, profit margin or commission if comfortable.

    Our platforms offer products as well as consultations. The consultations are provided discreetly and free of charge. The products are also very reasonably priced, in order to bring them within the reach of most of Indians.

    Since they wanted the products to be affordable, our margins are significantly less as compared to similar brands. ForMen have no commission models at present and are not very keen to walk that path. ForMen aims to grow as a D2C brand, whose products sell on the basis of their effectivity, quality & safety.

    ForMen – Startup Launch

    They launched the brand one fine day, and started advertising on social media. Orders slowly started picking up, mostly by word of mouth. They consciously kept their marketing budgets low and avoided the marketing blitzkrieg as founders were very sure of the slow and steady pace of growth based on ‘word of mouth’. They believe that a satisfied consumer is the best form of marketing.

    ForMen – Challenges Faced

    Since the core knowledge about wellness, remedies and formulations was with us, the challenge only lay in associating with partners. They did face challenges initially in associating with talent, that understood their core principles and also respected timelines. Due to the pandemic the website designing, raw material procurement & creative agencies were all not able to meet deadlines due to lockdowns, staff falling sick etc. This was a very frustrating aspect, which drove us to optimize their operations better and strengthen in-house skill sets. One of the important lessons for us, was to increase inhouse talent and reduce dependency on external agencies. This is more cost effective more flexible and amenable to quick decision making and course changing, when necessary.

    ForMen – Growth

    ForMen is headquartered in Hyderabad. Their suppliers & manufacturers are spread across the country.

    They have a central warehouse also located in Hyderabad. The company is doing well presently with 8-10% month on month growth. As ForMen expands their product portfolio, the future surely looks bright & shining. Their GMV is around Rs.600 on an average at present. Feedback from consumers has been very positive & encouraging.

    ForMen – Funding

    Hustle Partners has been doing the initial funding for ForMen. They may go for further funding in the coming 6 months, if they feel the need.

    ForMen – Recognition and Achievements

    ForMen has been featured in various magazines and have received an award ‘ Icon of the Year – Emerging Start Up Company for year 2021’ from the Times Group.

    ForMen – Future Plans

    ForMen team has plan to expand their product portfolio of ForMen and ForKids as well as step into International markets. R&D for unique and effective formulations targeted towards various aspects of health is in progress.

    ForMen – FAQs

    When was ForMen founded?

    ForMen was founded in 2021 by Dr. Lalitha Reddy and Sreeram Reddy.

    Where is the headquarters of ForMen?

    ForMen has its headquarters at Hyderabad.

    What are the products offered by ForMen?

    ForMen products presently belong to the following categories:

    • Performance
    • Sleep
    • Skin
    • Weight management
    • Stress
    • GUT Health
    • Eye health
    • Immunity
    • General Wellness
    • Hair