Fitness App Healthifyme Raises $6 Mn, Forays into Malaysia and Launches Online Food Marketplace

Bangalore-headquartered health and fitness app, HealthifyMe has raised $6 million as an extension of Series B round it raised in February this year. This Series B extension rounnd aka bridge funding was led by InnoVen Capital and existing investors of Healthyfime.

A Bridge financing round is meant to provide a startup with capital until it can raise a larger round of equity financing.

The round which is a mix of equity and debt saw participation from existing investors including Sistema Asia Fund, the India focused fund of the Russia based conglomerate, which recently announced its plan for double up its Indian Startup investments by extension of its first fund to $120 million.

Silicon Valley based Samsung NEXT, Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India), Inventus Capital and Blume Ventures alsoparticipate along with specialty financing firm Innoven Capital. The investment for Innoven Capital has been made via its Singapore entity, a market where HealthifyMe also has presence.

So far, HealthifyMe has raised a total of $25 million in funding over 7 rounds including this one.

Besides raising funds, the startup has also launched its services in Malaysia as part of its plan of overseas expansion into southeast Asia. The company has also hired a team of nutritionists and fitness coaches to develop personalized diet and fitness plans for its southeast Asian users.

The startup will expand its services across southeast Asia to Singapore, Indonesia and will also enter the Gulf region over the next quarters.

Tushar Vashisht, CEO of HealthifyMe, told a daily, "We have always seen ourselves as a global product company and have built our app in line with global standards of quality and excellence. More than 10% of our 8 million user base, 10% of our coaches & 20% of our overall revenues are already coming from international geographies."

To recall, according to a report published last year, India is the second largest market globally for investments in fitness tech startups, bagging $63 million in 2016-17.

EatBetter -- Online Curated Food Marketplace

Additionally, HealthifyMe also announced the launch of 'EatBetter', a curated online foods marketplace that specializes in 100% healthy, wholesome food products. With this, the 6-year-old startup marks the expansion of the its platform beyond nutrition and training services. The marketplace offers a wide product catalogue curated by HealthifyMe’s team of elite nutritionists and is intended to handhold users through their weight loss and fitness journeys.

The product lineup includes health bars, breakfast cereals, cookies, roasted snacks, beverages, natural protein supplements, super seeds, dry fruits and trail mixes, priced between Rs. 70 and Rs. 500. The marketplace now has 500+ SKUs and the company plans to expand this to over 1000 in the next 12 months.

Tushar Vashisht, Co-founder and CEO, HealthifyMe said, “EatBetter marks our expansion into a completely new but extremely relevant category – foods. Over 8 million users from across 200+ cities log their food intake on our app, making us the largest repository of food habits and nutritional requirements of Indians. With EatBetter deeply integrated with the rest of our product, we can seamlessly steer the consumer to make the right food choices on an everyday basis, helping them stay healthy.”

AI Virtual Ntritionist -- Ria 2.0

HealthifyMe also unveiled the new avatar of Ria, its artificial intelligence (AI) powered virtual nutritionist. Ria 2.0 can now not only listen and read, but also see & identify healthy & unhealthy foods from menu cards, phone screens and entire plates of food.

Powered by Ria, the company also announced the launch of smart diet plans (starting Rs. 299 per month) that would be "the world’s first completely automated & curated diet plans" -- claims the startup. It would represent the first instance of technology completely managing a human being’s health & fitness needs by designing personalized diet & fitness plans.

These plans have been built from the learnings obtained from the 3.5 Lakhs meals designed by HealthifyMe’s coaches for its users since its inception that take into account a user’s taste preferences, local cuisine nuances, weight-loss goals and medical conditions.

Ria’s intelligence stems from the 200 million diet logs made by HealthifyMe users over the years. She can now be accessed through Alexa devices and can understand over 5 languages. Ria is the first port of call for over 35% customers today, even when they have a choice to speak to a human coach.

Source - Business Standard, PC Quest

[Top Featured Image - Stories.Healthyfime.com]

HealthifyMe Launches Key New Features to Make India Healthy Again

HealthifyMe, Indian mobile health and fitness company, has announced a slew of new features and product innovations as they edge towards a ground breaking number of 1 million users. These innovations include user customized daily tasks, healthy suggestions for a balanced diet and daily workout plans with videos personally curated for each premium customer. HealthifyMe also announced that it would enable one month subscription of ‘Health Tasks’ free of cost, collectively worth INR 2 crores for the first 1 lakh signups.

Post its recent $ 6 million in Series A funding, HealthifyMe has committed to investing heavily in product development, and increasing its user base in India. This is validated through the launch of these new features as well as doubling of the user base in a period of 3 months. HealthifyMe has also increased the number of fitness coaches, nutritionists and yoga instructors on its platform by 100% in the same time period.

Speaking of the HealthifyMe's latest feature launches and future plans, Tushar Vashisht, Co-Founder and CEO said, “With HealthifyMe reaching a million Indian customers, we have over 50 million foods and exercises tracked on HealthifyMe. This has allowed us to power next wave of data-led innovations such as 'Tasks' that users can follow to achieve their custom fitness & weight loss goals and 'Healthy Suggestions' which advises our customers what to eat next."

HealthifyMe has also made steady progress with their corporate health and wellness program, tying up with the likes of Unilever, Cognizant, Philips, GE and also hospitals like Manipal Hospitals, Medanta and Apollo ACODE, among many, to enable employees and patients alike adopt their mobile platform. A gamified leader-board system allows employees across organizations track their fitness and compare themselves to progress made by their peers on the same platform. Through this platform, HealthifyMe has been able to reach above 100,000 employees across India.

HealthifyMe has already been pushing the boundaries in design and tech within the health and fitness sector worldwide with innovative features like photo and voice tracking of foods, on-demand coach connect and the world's largest database of Indian foods. HealthifyMe is the first app to introduce calorie counting of Indian dishes. The mobile app helps users track their calorie intake and fitness routines, sums up the data and connects them with nutritionists and fitness trainers. The data is analysed to provide users with personalized diet and workout plans. HealthifyMe is available on both Google Play and Apple App Store and has been consistently recognized for its quality and user friendliness. Users can choose from a range of beginner to premium plans to suit their health needs.

Fitness App HealthifyMe Bags $6M Funding from IDG Ventures India, Inventus Capital and Blume Ventures

Health and fitness app HealthifyMe which is owned by Caeruz Ventures Pvt Ltd., has raised $6 million (Rs 40 crore) in its series A round of funding led by IDG Ventures India, Inventus Capital and Blume Ventures. The raised funding will be used to further develop its digital coaching platform and to accelerate growth in India. With these funds the company plans to impact 5 million users and tie up with over 500 corporate and healthcabire partners.

The company had received a pre-series A funding in two rounds from mobile phone maker Micromax and a group of angel investors in 2015.

HealthifyMe was founded by Tushar Vashist and Sachin Shenoy, the app allows consumers to keep track of diet, plan workouts and ask health related questions to nutritionists and dieticians on the platform. The startup works in partnership with health institutes such as Medanta, Apollo and Manipal. Its app is available for Android and iOS users and enables users to keep a track of their calories, set personal fitness goals and measure progress.

The firm boasts of the world’s largest database of Indian foods and syncs with all leading wearables including Fitbit, YuFit, MiBand amongst others besides its own fitness band RIST™. As part of its subscription services, HealthifyMe connects users with elite nutritionists and trainers who review their progress, provide diet/fitness plans and work with the users to help them achieve their weight, fitness goals.

The startup also has a gamified, social platform that is being used by progressive Corporates to engage and reward employees for healthy behaviour. Unlike others in the space that are focused only on steps, HealthifyMe engages employees wholistically around healthy eating, running, weight, hydration etc as well. Given its mobile-first approach, the platform is cost efficient and massively scalable and has been used by PMC Sierra, Indegene, Unilever amongst others.

A couple of days back, Delhi-based fitness startup ClassVerse, a marketplace providing users access to fitness studios and classes, has shut down after operating for nearly 10 months of its operations & launch.