HealthifyMe gets $6 mn in Series A funding; to become controlled marketplace

Health and fitness app HealthifyMe, run by Caeruz Ventures Pvt. Ltd, has raised $6 million (around Rs 40 crore) in Series A funding from IDG Ventures India, Inventus Capital and Blume Ventures.

With the capital raised, the company plans to invest in its technology and product to further develop its digital coaching platform and to accelerate growth in India, Tushar Vashist, CEO, HealthifyMe said in a press briefing in Bangalore.

In June 2015, HealthifyMe had raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A funding from a group of individual investors. In May last year, the company had secured money from handset maker Micromax, as part of its pre-Series A round.

Gopal Srinivasan, chairman, TVS Capital Funds; Bala Parthasarathy, managing partner of seed stage investor AngelPrime; Sashi Reddi, founder, AppLabs; Amit Gupta, co-founder, InMobi; Pallav Nadhani, co-founder, FusionCharts; Roopa Nath, member, Mumbai Angels, among others participated in the pre-Series A round.

The company had previously raised $250,000 in angel funding in 2012 from Rajesh Mushroowala, board member of Sytel and AngelPrime, Srini Koppulu of Hyderabad Angels, Arun Seth, former chairman of Alcatel-Lucent India, Kunal Bajaj, former board member, One97 Communications, Sashi Reddi, owner, Sri Capital, and a few others.

Founded in 2012 by Tushar Vashisht, Mathew Cherian and Sachin Shenoy, HealthifyMe claims to be the first app to introduce calorie tracking of Indian dishes. Vashisht claimed that over 25 million Indian food items have been tracked on the platform so far.

Cherian is no longer with the company.

The HealthifyMe app tracks users' fitness and exercise regimes, sums up the data and connects them to nutritionists and trainers on the platform who analyse the data and provide them with contextual feedback. In its premium service, users can provide information about their food intake by sharing a photo of their food and schedule a telephonic appointment with their nutritionists or trainers who create diet and fitness plans for them and offer advice on lifestyle modifications for healthy living. In addition to diet plans and workout plans, users also get access to an online support community to use social motivation, a powerful tool that keeps people committed to their fitness goals.

Currently, it works on a model where all its coaches are in-house employees (Vashisht put the number at an extended bracket of 100-1000, a mix of full-time and part-time employees). Vashisht said the company is slowly moving towards a controlled marketplace model where independent, verified coaches would be listed. The larger focus would be to transform into a complete weight loss solution rather than only a calorie tracker application.

The company claims to have over 5,00,000 users and works with a bunch of healthcare partners such as Manipal Hospitals and Medanta, in addition to offering corporate wellness programmes to companies such as Philips, GE and Cognizant. It aims to increase its user base to 5 million and tie up with over 500 corporate and healthcare partners in 2-3 years' time.

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