HealthifyMe, a five-year-old start-up backed by Dubai-based NB Ventures, has unveiled a new health and fitness app, by which a user can talk to a nutritionist created by artificial intelligence.
The Bengaluru-based firm, which developed the eponymous app, will make the new AI-powered app available to select consumers initially and roll-out the full feature version by January, Tushar Vashisht, co-founder and CEO said in an interview.
‘3 million users’
“There are three million users and 100 million exercises on the app,” Mr. Vashisht said. “Millions of exchanges between nutritionists and consumers led us to create a knowledge graph. The graph consisted of both structured and unstructured data. It is probably the world’s first completely artificial intelligent nutritionist.”
With the change in the economic conditions and a shift towards an unhealthy lifestyle, there has been a significant increase in the burden of non-communicable diseases in the last 25 years, according to a report by industry body FICCI along with EY. Bolstered by increasing awareness, and a push from the insurance industry and government, the wellness industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12% for the next 5 years and reach ₹150,000 crore by the year ending March 2020, the report said.
“Cardiovascular and heart diseases are on the increase,” Mr. Vashisht said. “Six months ago, we started on this journey to build project Amadeus. It was a cherry on the cake and an unintended outcome of our business model, which was to create an interface between nutritionists and customers.”
HealthifyMe, which received two rounds of funding amounting to $8 million and counts IDG, Inventus Capital and Bloom Ventures as investors, plans to diversify into education and finance, Mr. Vashisht said.
Personal assistant
“Ria, which acts as a personal assistant, can handle more than a million customers. A nutritionist can handle maybe up to 250 clients. A slow migration from the health platform is on the cards as Ria is language neutral and can speak any language. I can cater to clients outside India,” he said.
The company, which delivers measurable results on eating habits, fitness and weight, employs 300 people in its Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai offices.
With a database of more than 25,000 Indian food items, App users can track their food and calories, and get detailed nutritional breakdown of their meals along with personalised recommendations and feedback.
HealthifyMe, founded in 2012, was incubated by Microsoft Accelerator.
Among others, fitness start-up GOQii raised $13.4 million and brought Ratan Tata on board as an investor in 2016. CureFit, raised $15 million from Accel, IDG and Kalaari in the same year. while TruWeight got an undisclosed amount from Kalaari n 2015.
