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Tag: iThrive

  • iThrive: Revolutionizing Health with Mugdha Pradhan’s Visionary Approach

    StartupTalky presents Recap’23, a series of in-depth interviews where we engage with founders and industry leaders to explore their growth in 2023 and their predictions for the future.

    The health and wellness industry prioritizes holistic well-being, encompassing physical, mental, and emotional health. From fitness and nutrition to mental wellness, it offers diverse solutions for a balanced lifestyle. Gyms, virtual platforms, and wellness retreats cater to individual health needs. With a growing emphasis on preventive healthcare and mindfulness, this industry plays a crucial role in fostering a healthier society.

    In 2022, the worldwide health and wellness market reached a value of USD 5,243.3 billion. Projections indicate substantial growth, with expectations to surpass USD 8,945.3 billion by 2032, reflecting a robust compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.5% from 2023 to 2032, according to Precedence Research. This expansion is driven by a heightened focus on preventive healthcare and an increasing awareness of holistic well-being.

    In a recent Recap’23 interview, we at StartupTalky had the privilege of connecting with Mugdha Pradhan, Founder, and CEO of iThrive, to see how the brand operates in the health and wellness world. We looked at their plans and learned about iThrive’s special way of promoting well-being.

    StartupTalky: What inspired the establishment of iThrive, and how has its vision evolved over time?

    Mugdha Pradhan: After I healed and radically transformed my own health, other people began to consult me for their health problems. I realised I wanted to scale this further and wanted to create a system that could easily help people heal themselves without going through the struggle that I did. Luckily, One of my former clients at the time decided to fund this vision of mine, and that is how iThrive was born.

    Over time, our capacity has increased, and now our vision is to eventually, through our various services and practices, make the whole world free of disease and suffering.

    StartupTalky: Could you share insights into the range of health concerns iThrive addresses and any notable successes in managing chronic ailments within your clientele?

    Mugdha Pradhan: Since our inception in 2019, we have helped over 3000 clients reverse over 174 different health conditions. We started out with mostly cases of weight loss and diabetes and eventually expanded to more and more areas as our knowledge and expertise grew. Our clientele ranges from as young as 2-year-olds right up to 75-year-olds.

    We’ve healed many cases of IBS, IBD, hypertension, metabolic disorders, thyroid and hormonal issues, skin issues like psoriasis, etc.

    StartupTalky: In the pursuit of creating healthier communities, what strategies does iThrive employ?

    Mugdha Pradhan: We do everything in our power to realise our vision of creating healthier, happier, lifestyle-disease-free communities around the world every single day. We know we don’t have the resources to heal every single person on the planet ourselves. That is why we started the academy to train and certify functional nutritionists. Critics remark that it is detrimental to our business because we are creating our own competition- but it actually serves our vision.

    We also do all that we can to make free educational content and media available to create awareness and get the right knowledge about health to the masses. Once you enroll in our program, you get life-long support by getting added to our “Thrive Tribe” community, where you receive regular updates and can get your queries answered.

    Mugdha Pradhan, Founder and CEO of iThrive, Pioneers a Functional Nutrition Approach to Tackle Chronic Health Issues
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    StartupTalky: How does iThrive stay informed about the latest advancements and best practices in the health and wellness industry?

    Mugdha Pradhan: The research department within iThrive Academy and Research Centre updates our treatment protocols and course curriculum on a regular basis. The team keeps itself informed through various resources like published papers, podcasts, and articles put out by leading functional medicine practitioners globally. We have a designated chief knowledge officer who keeps researching and contributing to our knowledge base and treatment protocols.

    StartupTalky: What unique approaches or methodologies does iThrive use to promote overall well-being and address individual health needs?

    Mugdha Pradhan: We have an extensive blood panel that is done as part of our “root cause analysis” procedure, covering a broad range of biomarkers and using specialised interpretation protocols that provide a thorough baseline understanding of the individual’s health. Apart from this, we may use further advanced diagnostics based on the individual’s case.

     We use all the data and the client’s personal preferences to formulate a highly bio-individual treatment plan. Although our practice is based on functional medicine, we incorporate the best parts of multiple other modalities and therapies like circadian rhythm optimization, Ayurveda, sound healing, etc.

    StartupTalky: Could you provide examples of success stories or testimonials from individuals who have experienced positive transformations through iThrive’s programs or services?

    Mugdha Pradhan: As mentioned above, we’ve helped over 3000 individuals reverse their health conditions. You can find testimonials on our social media pages as well as on our website.

    Here are three testimonials for example:




    StartupTalky: What are the important tools and software you use to run iThrive smoothly?

    Mugdha Pradhan: We use Google Workspace for most of our documentation and communication. Our projects and marketing teams make use of a wide variety of new and upcoming tools, and they’re always changing. These include well-known tools like Zoho for CRM, Tally and Jotforms for form automation, Pabbly for automation, Figma and Webflow for web development, and many more.

    StartupTalky: How does iThrive personalize health programs to cater to the diverse needs and concerns of individuals?

    Mugdha Pradhan: As mentioned above, our root cause analysis blood testing, along with further advanced tests, helps amass a large amount of data on each client. This, along with the personal preferences of the client, such as diet and lifestyle preferences, is used to craft a tailored program carefully for them.

    StartupTalky: In what ways does iThrive plan to expand its impact and reach more communities globally in the future?

    Mugdha Pradhan: We’ve rolled out targeted marketing campaigns for overseas audiences in some major countries like the USA, the Middle East, Australia, and Canada. We’ve tied up with labs in some of these countries so that clients can get their tests done easily. We have a major partnership with Rupa Health in the USA, the biggest platform for premium diagnostics in the country. We’re in the process of getting US FDA approval for our supplements as well. We’re working to become more active in biohacking and alternative healthcare communities throughout the world.

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    StartupTalky: What key lessons has your team learned in your journey, and how do these lessons inform your future strategies and initiatives?

    Mugdha Pradhan: We have learned that, as a premium healthcare brand, we can’t compromise on quality in any way when it comes to our products and services. Our supplements use the highest quality ingredients available and are devoid of cheap fillers and harmful additives found in most other brands. We’ve constantly refined our services to make them better, and it’s an ongoing process that will probably always be on. We’ve learned to be open-minded when it comes to our approach and beliefs around healthcare because we’ve been wrong about certain things we were doing, and we’ve rectified them.

    We’ve also learned to make better hiring decisions as we’ve realized shoddy and mediocre work at any step can hamper the quality of the final product.

    StartupTalky: What growth and innovation opportunities does iThrive see in the health and wellness sector in the coming years?

    Mugdha Pradhan: The wellness sector is one of the most booming industries in the world, estimated to be currently worth 4.2 Billion USD globally. With the constant increase in industrialization, our modern urban environment continues to become more and more unfavorable for health. The burden of chronic diseases continues to mount globally. Conventional medicine is corrupted and very inept at countering chronic disease, only offering pharma drugs to suppress symptoms. People are starting to become aware of this, and interest in wellness and preventive healthcare is rising. People are looking for good, evidence-based alternative healthcare options.

    StartupTalky: One tip that you would like to share with individuals seeking to improve their health and well-being, drawing from iThrive’s expertise and experience?

    Mugdha Pradhan: Always get your bloodwork done regularly. Get the data evaluated by a reputable functional medicine practitioner from time to time. Or just learn to do it yourself. And don’t ignore small symptoms like headaches, fatigue, and digestive issues until they become worse and need serious treatment. Don’t wait for your health to break down fully before you start making changes. Take care of it.

    StartupTalky extends its gratitude to Ms. Mugdha Pradhan for dedicating her valuable time and generously sharing her insights with all of us.

    Explore more Recap’23 Interviews here.

  • Mugdha Pradhan, Founder and CEO, iThrive, Pioneers a Functional Nutrition Approach to Tackle Chronic Health Issues

    StartupTalky presents Recap’22. This is a series of interviews in which we conduct in-depth discussions with founders & industry leaders to understand their growth in 2022 and their predictions for the future.

    The nutritional supplements industry was valued at USD 151.9 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.9% between 2022 and 2030.  The driving factor for the growth of this industry is the increasing awareness towards personal health and wellbeing.  

    Many businesses within the industry are centered around promoting healthy living through functional nutrition and dietary supplements.  

    For this Interview, we invited Mugdha Pradhan, founder & CEO, iThrive, and we talked about the growth, challenges, insights, and future opportunities in the Health and Wellness industry.

    StartupTalky: Mugdha, what service does your company provide? What was the motivation/vision with which you started?

    Mugdha: We are a healthcare company based on the principles of functional nutrition and we provide multiple services:

    Health and nutrition consultation and therapy: We provide a one-time consultation where we analyze the individual’s blood tests and do a root cause analysis. Our primary product, the ALIVE program is a 3-month health transformation program where the client is guided full-time by a nutritionist and health coach.

    Functional Nutrition course: Our education vertical, iThrive Academy offers India’s only functional nutrition course. It is a 4-month course.

    Supplements: Our supplements line, iThrive Essentials consists of supplements
    formulated in-house by our R&D team.

    iThrive’s vision- “We create healthier, happier, lifestyle-disease-free communities across the world every single day” guides all our work.

    StartupTalky: What new services have been added in the past year? What is/are the USP/s of your service?

    Mugdha: Our supplements line, iThrive Essentials, recently completed one year this November. iThrive supplements are formulated in-house by our R&D team and are at par with the top international brands but at an affordable price suitable for the Indian market. iThrive Evolve, our sports nutrition program was rolled out very recently. This is targeted at athletes, looking to utilize the power of functional nutrition and cutting-edge modern medical science to maximize their performance.

    StartupTalky: How has the health and wellness industry changed in recent years, and how has your company adapted to these changes?

    Mugdha: Conventional medicine is dreadfully inept at curing people of chronic lifestyle diseases, instead just focusing on suppressing the symptoms with drugs. More and more people are starting to realize this and as a result, good evidence-based alternative medicine practices such as functional nutrition and integrative medicine that focus on holistic health are getting more and more popular. The alternative health and wellness industry is estimated to be 4.2 Trillion USD.

    iThrive is India’s leading functional nutrition platform. We ourselves are the change that the industry is witnessing. Functional medicine has often been described as the future of medicine.

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    Mugdha: We have an extensive R&D department that updates our treatment protocols and course curriculum every single week. The team keeps itself informed through various resources like published papers and podcasts and articles put out by leading functional medicine practitioners globally.

    StartupTalky: What key metrics do you track to check the company’s growth and performance?

    Mugdha: We keep track of our clinical data thoroughly including the number of clients enrolled, the number of successfully healed, the number of successful reversals of specific medical conditions, etc.

    We also track our revenue and finances intricately. The performance of individual employees and teams in the organization is tracked via key performance indicators(KPIs) that are determined based on the role.

    StartupTalky: What were the most significant challenges your company faced in the past year and how did you overcome them?

    Mugdha: Our company has scaled up quite significantly in the past year, especially in terms of our workforce. A lot of things that were previously done very informally could not be continued in the same way. We introduced a proper hierarchical structure in the organization with defined teams. Additionally, all of our data including client data and other internal company data has been properly organized with additional security measures added.

    All of this has optimized our workflow and increased efficiency. It also sets us to scale up further more easily.

    StartupTalky: Good service, is something everyone is talking about in the service industry. How do you ensure that your clients are happy?

    Mugdha: Client satisfaction is our topmost priority. We have separate roles in the organization to specifically, focus on client services. When clients enroll for our program they are assigned both a nutritionist and a health coach who is available for support round the clock both through calling and via text.

    StartupTalky: What are the different strategies you use for marketing? Tell us about any growth hack which you pulled off.

    Mugdha: The biggest strategy we use is to create brand awareness. iThrive is a pioneer of Functional Nutrition in India. The term Functional Nutrition in itself is a novel concept that has only recently reached India but it’s a method we have been following for a long time.

    In order to market this we have been using social media to create awareness. We have three main verticals we market in a similar manner by posting reels, posts, and advertisements. We also conduct webinars monthly to educate people and build trust among our audience.

    The recent new marketing strategy we used was to create a campaign around Diwali. It was one of our biggest projects. We had a 60-second advertisement around it, social media promotions, PR, and more. The campaign gained great traction. And it paid off really well. We gained a lot of recognition.

    StartupTalky: Foreign clients- this is what most of the service-based companies are looking for. What has been your experience?

    Mugdha: We have had our fair share of foreign clients. Our vision is to create healthier, happier, lifestyle-disease-free communities across the world every single day. So like many service brands we do target foreign audiences but we do not focus on them majorly.

    StartupTalky: What are the important tools and software you use to run your business smoothly?

    Mugdha: We use many different tools to make our work easier. One such tool is Height, a project management tool that we use to keep track of all ongoing projects across all three verticals and the myriad of platforms we market on. Each department like the design team, the content team, the production team, etc has its own set of tools, specific to its niche.

    Our design team uses Figma to make everything right from social media posts to websites. Also, our nutrition team uses Trello to consolidate clients’ documentation. And of course, we use many features that google provides like Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Meet, etc.

    StartupTalky: What opportunities do you see for future growth in the health and wellness industry in India and the world? What kind of difference in market behavior have you seen between India and the world?

    Mugdha: Functional Nutrition, though a novel concept has been gaining popularity as it fills a major gap- evidence-based practices in alternative healthcare. And as a pioneer, we see a graph that increases exponentially. Especially with the next round of funding just around the corner, we have projected iThrive to become a household name.

    Just in India, we have projected revenue of $14 M in the next 5 years. Globally, we
    have clients from UAE, the USA, Australia, and Pakistan.

    StartupTalky: What lessons did your team learn in the past year and how will these inform your future plans and strategies?

    Mugdha: Since last year our team has grown 3x. What the initial team learned was that manifesting does work. We understood how important was it to be true to our morals and culture. It was very important that how much ever big our team grows, we need to keep our culture intact.

    StartupTalky: How do you plan to expand the Customers, service offering, and team base in the future?

    Mugdha: We are working towards expanding our customer base globally. Our current global client base is mostly referral clients but we are looking forward to marketing iThrive and its subsidiaries across the globe. Especially Australia, UAE, and USA.

    As far as our services go, we have three verticals, iThrive ALIVE, our parent company that focuses on the reversal and prevention of chronic lifestyle diseases, iThrive Academy, our teaching platform, and iThrive Essentials, our supplements vertical.

    iThrive ALIVE itself has different programs that the client can choose from as per their requirements. Other than these, we just recently rolled out our sports nutrition vertical, iThrive Evolve.

    In the last year, we have increased our team from 20 employees to almost 60
    employees and are expecting to hire more. With the company growing exponentially the need for more resources has increased.

    StartupTalky: One tip that you would like to share with another Service company founder?

    Mugdha: Be true to your vision and surround yourself with people who can help you achieve it. You do not have to do everything by yourself. Hire experts who can help you in areas you are not proficient in. And always look for people, especially your core members, who challenge you. Nothing drives you to become better than someone who can challenge you.

    We thank Mugdha Pradhan for spending her valuable time and sharing her learnings with all of us.

    You can read other Recap’22 Interviews here.

  • Smart Strategies to Grow Your Business | Tips for Entrepreneurship

    The article is contributed by Mugdha Pradhan – CEO and Founder of iTHRIVE.

    In the contemporary world, the term “startup” is glamorized to another extent. Every person wants to become an entrepreneur without fully understanding what it means to start a business. Individuals look at entrepreneurship with rosy colored glasses and think of it as a medium to become an authority, rich and live life on their own terms. These outcomes are very much possible; however, it takes a lot of hard work to attain such freedom. One has to work without money for long hours before they can enjoy the empire. One has to convince people to use their product before building brand loyalty.

    So now the question arises what is the right way to become an entrepreneur and grow your business. Following are a few smart strategies to grow and sustain your startup.

    Solve a Problem

    It is important that one builds a product or a service that is genuinely going to solve a problem area. A very great way is to solve a problem that is close to you. When you do that, you’ll be able to convince the masses to use your product/service, and it will be more difficult for you to give up on it as it truly was helpful to you.

    Choose Teammates Carefully

    One cannot build a business alone. You will need a strong foundational team who believes in your vision as much as you, if not more. This team will become a brand ambassador for your venture in the initial days. Look for partners that complement your skills and get help whenever necessary.

    Plan for Failure

    Failure upon starting something new is inevitable, and it is important that one is prepared for that in order to adapt to the situation and learn quickly in such a scenario. It is also important to have Business Continuity Strategies in place by understanding potential hindrances in your business.

    Get Help

    When building something big, it’s naive to think that you’ll be able to do everything by yourself. Everybody has their limitations. Hence other than building your core team as advised in point number 2, it’s imperative to utilize your network and resources to their utmost potential. The key is to work smart and not hard.

    Find a Mentor

    One of the most cliche pieces of advice and yet often overlooked, a mentor can quickly take your career and business to new heights. More than a mentor, an advisory board is preferred. These advisors will not only know how to build a brand that lasts, but they will be your cheerleaders when the journey gets tough. Their advice will not only be optimistic but rather practical because they have experienced failure and difficulties in their journey too.

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    Minimum Viable Product

    It might be tempting to add multiple features/ products/ services at the time of your launch, however, keeping things simple often is the best approach. Minimum viable products work best as they allow you to get feedback from actual target users rather than you perfecting and solving imaginary problems even before launching.

    Test Your Product/Service

    A business is only for its customers. Don’t solve a problem or give out services that are not asked for. It might be surprising, but many can get ahead of themselves and try to launch a product that is not needed in the present. So before going all out, ask for feedback from potential targeted audiences to understand the viability of your product/ service.

    A lot of us are reading the same books and following the same advice from traditional leaders. However, we need to follow the current trends and use a platform where most people are active. Such platforms can be Twitter, Reddit, Quora, Instagram, or even clubhouse. Remember, your product has to reach the audience before the audience can reach your product.

    Marketing/PR

    There is a common misconception that customers are attracted to good products, and hence one should focus on perfecting their product/service, and word of mouth is the only marketing one will need. While word of mouth is still one of the strongest marketing ways, marketing and PR have become quite necessary in a world where products are in abundance. PR strategies like garnering coverage in a digital or physical newspaper or a magazine can be very effective in increasing the reachability of your business.

    SEO

    SEO consistently is becoming important in the contemporary world of startups. Aiming to use appropriate SEO when posting digitally helps a long way in broadcasting your name in organic sales.

    Strong Sales Funnel

    While marketing and SEO can increase your organic sales, reaching out constantly to your customer base and getting leads is important. A strong sales funnel, and sales target will help you create a plan to grow your company at a steady rate.

    Create a Blue Ocean in Your Market

    The term “blue ocean” was coined in the entrepreneurship industry in 2005 to define a new industry with hardly any competition or barriers in the way of innovators. When a new or unknown sector or innovation appears, it creates a vast “empty ocean” of business options and opportunities. Hence try to create a blue ocean in your market and solve a problem that no one is solving.

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    Conclusion

    Apart from these tips, remember to keep trying new things in your entrepreneurial journey. All of the above-mentioned strategies were once a breakthrough idea in the startup world as well, so keep on learning and inventing; moreover, defining your “why” will keep you in the game even when the road gets tough. I hope these strategies help you during your venture.