Would you believe that more Indians die due to diabetes than smoking? Every year almost 230,000 Indians die due to smoking whereas 254,500 die due to diabetes. Diabetes is a bigger problem in India, yet it gathers the least coverage. On the other hand smoking, drinking and drug usage garner more attention. An approximate 69.9 million Indians will have diabetes by 2025 and 80 million by 2030, making it a grave medical emergency.

Fortunately, the cure for this chronic disease is simple lifestyle changes and enhancement in one’s diet, fitness and mental wellbeing. One only needs to change a few things in their life to achieve better health and eliminate diabetes. To provide such changes CrossFit L2 trainer Rohan Verma and ACE-certified behavioural health coach Aditya Kaicker came together to start Breathe Well-Being in 2020.

Breathe Well-Being helps track an individual’s lifestyle and then suggest personalised modifications. The entire process is not only customised but also gamified. This makes healthcare both fun and highly effective. By fulfilling healthy tasks and goals one gets reward points that can be redeemed with Amazon and Paytm. It can also cater to corporates that want their employees’ health to be the best.

This holistic well-being platform was declared amongst the top 5 early-stage ventures by GSF Accelerator in 2016. In its pre-Series A funding round it received $1 million from 3One4 Capital,  Nexus Venture Partners, Ashish Gupta, Stanford Angels and Entrepreneurs India. In its Series A round, it raised $5.5 million from Accel Partners, General Catalyst and Scott Shleifer, Global MD and Tiger Global. 

With the funds, the venture aims to reverse type-2 diabetes in 1 million Indians by 2025. Although a remarkable quest it still leaves open the number of diabetic patients in India. Every year an approximate 1.2 million Indians get diabetes. The numbers are just staggering. Can Breathe Well-being’s healthy changes help India get rid of its title ‘Diabetes Capital’?