The World Health Organisation estimates that close to 2 billion or 40% of the world population is overweight and 650 million are obese. In India, the number of obese is close to 135 million. Tushar Vashist found himself in a similar situation.  After serving as an analyst in Deutsche Bank in Singapore, he came back to India overweight. He was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. Coming back to India, he had a very demanding job of creating India’s digital Aadhar ID. 

Here he became conscious of his weight and started monitoring it. But he faced the challenge of calculating the calories and nutrients found in Indian food. So he along with his UIDAI teammate Mathew Cherian built an excel sheet counting the nutritional information of Indian food. They further took help from The National Institute of Nutrition to scale up the list with more accurate data. This food list became the foundation on which HealthifyMe was created.

HealthifyMe was started in 2012 by Tushar Vashisht (CEO), Mathew Cherian, and Sachin Shenoy (CTO). The latter was the finalist in Google’s coding competition Code Jam. He has 5 patents under his belt and was a part of Google SMS Channel, Google Finance, and Orkut Developer Platform. 

This startup helped people personalize their fitness journey. With the help of HealthifyMe, one can track the calorie intake as well as the amount burned with exercise. The app checks with your current condition to set healthy goals and creates fitness and diet plans to achieve those goals. The company is now planning to add a disease reversal venture to its platform. Their new initiative will have chronic disease management for diabetes, cholesterol, hypertension, and more. 

In 2020, HealthifyMe ventured into the mental health sector with HealthifySense. This platform will help users access qualified counselors for their mental health issues. They have partnered with Fitternity to give their users 12,000+ fitness studios and gyms across India. They have partnered with Swiggy to get their users to access healthy food. For groceries, the company has partnered with Milkbasket. 

In 2017, they created an AI nutritionist named Ria who in the initial year solved 5% of the user's health queries and the rest was solved by the nutritionist and fitness team. Currently, Ria alone tackles 70-80% of all queries leaving only the hardest question for the expert team. 

In 2017, they crossed Rs 10 crore in run rate. Two years later their run rate crossed Rs 100 crores, signalling 10 times growth. In 2020, their revenue too crossed the Rs 100 crore threshold. The pandemic has doubled HealthifyMe’s revenue and user base. The app crossed the 25 million downloads threshold. This July, in its Series C funding the company, raised $75 million from US-based venture Leapfrog and Saudi Arabia’s Elm. This round boosted the company’s total funding to $100 million-plus. The other major investors are Sistema Asia Capital, InnoVen Capital and Inventus Capital.

With the fresh capital, HealthifyMe wants to expand into new territories, especially in North America. In 2020, they entered the Southeast Asian Market, i.e. Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei, and recorded a turnover of $1 million. Will HealthifyMe’s global expansion help 2 billion people across the world fight obesity?