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Your virtual health companion

BIBHU RANJAN MISHRABangalore, 11 October

HealthifyMe, a Bangalore-based startup that provideswellness services on the cloud, began as an idea in themind of its co-founder Tushar Vashisht while working asa volunteer for the unique identity (UID) project under itschairman Nandan Nilekani.

Vashisht, a graduate from the University ofPennsylvania and a former investmentbanker, refined the idea by trying to under-stand the food habits of Indians living on~100 a day, and then built the applicationHealthifyMe with Sachin Shenoy, a formerengineer at Googles research laboratory

in India. The application combines a nutri-tion database with services from expertsoffered on the cloud. It could disrupt theway wellness services are offered in India.

In just over a year, HealthifyMe hasbeen downloaded over 30,000 times, a sig-nificant percentage of them by paid users.Its users include Google India Managing

Director Rajan Anandan and GopalSrinivasan, chairman and managing director of TVSCapital Funds.

Available on Android, HealthifyMe allows users toachieve fitness goals using smartphones. It has a databaseof Indian food with nutrition and calorie informationand is supported in real-time by a team of doctors, nutri-

tionists and fitness trainers to advise on food intake andexercises needed to burn excess calories.When we started two-and-a-half years ago, it was a

very bold for any app to just focus on Indian customers.Fundamentally, it was not possible to create a business inthe digital space targeting Indian consumers. But wethought that two years down the line when our productwas ready, Indian consumers would also be ready to pay

for such a service, said Vashisht. The good news is that,we are beginning to see that bet paying off.

In 2011, Vashisht quit his job in Deutsche Bank,

Singapore, to work with Indias ambitious UID project.He started working in the business development and proj-ect strategy team reporting to Nilekani and BalaParthasarathy, co-founder of Snapfish, an online photostorage and sharing platform that was acquired by H-P foraround $300 million. Parthasarathy had, along with scoresof other techies and entrepreneurs, joined the UIDAI. Ijoined the UIDAI thinking that I will work for the commonman. After working for a year-and-a-half without pay, I fig-

ured I had enough policy research but whatreally mattered was to know how it felt to bea common person.

It was then Vashisht and a friend,Mathew Cherian, an MIT graduate, start-ed the mission to first live on ~100 a day, and

then ~32 a day, the poverty line as definedby the government. We realised that youcannot track your basic food. When I wasliving on ~100 a day, I could not track mybisi bele baath (a Kannada dish) and dosa.So we started building our first tool in adeep excel sheet after noting down the rawvalues of Indian foods, recalls Vashisht.

One of the many things the duo realisedwas why Indians need more protein instead of carbohy-drates. Their experiment got enough media attention inIndia and abroad and Vashisht and Cherian were fre-quently invited to give talks to academic institutions,organisations and MPs. Interestingly, on every occasionthey found people wanted a copy of the excel sheet they

had created on the nutrition database.Vashisht and his team then built a mobile app andput the data in the cloud so that everybody could accessit. However, he realised that an app was not going to helphim monetise the platform. Human services on the cloudgave it an integrated experience. A feature called LiveTrack provides an idea about how many calories are burntwhen users start working out. The application has a voice

command system that can read out the calorie content offood when asked. Additionally, users can click a picture ofthe dish and receive details about its calorie content.

Tech start-up set to change wellness segment with cloud-based services

Available on Android,HealthifyMe allowsusers to achievefitness goals using

smartphones. It has adatabase of Indianfood with nutritionand calorieinformation and issupported in real-timeby a team of doctors