Founder of lndia’s leading health app, Tushar Vashisht, says that healthcare needs to keep innovating so that they can continue helping Indians from small towns fight obesity and be the best version of themselves
Tushar Vashisht
Tushar Vashisht
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Back in January 2020, just a few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic escalated, HealthifyMe [an AI-led health and fitness app], had over 12 million users. At the time, we already had a variety of tie-ups planned, including partnering with food ordering platform Swiggy to curate FitPicks, a collection of restaurants that offered healthiest food options for ordering across Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bengaluru, and hosting the world’s longest single stretch virtual Yoga festival.
COVID-19, which hit us by March 2020, only heightened the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle. People’s routines changed—less commute and restricted access to gyms and parks. This, even if momentarily, had a direct impact on people’s health.
As per data collected by our platform, the months of March, April and May 2020, when the country was under lockdown, saw inactivity levels rise sharply among Indians. While in February, before the lockdown, 52 per cent of Indian women and 44 per cent of Indian men were inactive (burnt less than 50 per cent of their calorie budget), the inactivity levels rose to their peak in the month of April with close to 70 per cent women and 65 per cent men being inactive. The situation improved slightly in the month of May, but there was a need to get India moving again with newer services.
People too, had more time to look after themselves and focus on their immunity. The market immediately recognised this and began funding more companies in this space.
On our part, we launched HealthifyStudio, to help people work out from the comfort and safety of their homes and improve their activity levels. This and other new services that we launched during this time, gained a lot of traction. In fact, HealthifyMe saw an exponential rise in the number of people accessing the platform—in two years, our user base doubled to 25 million people across 300+ cities.
Technology acts as a resource multiplier and helps cut down geographical limitations. A majority of our users come from Tier 2, Tier 3 cities and we enable them to track calories of 1,00,000+ Indian foods, which includes access to dishes and cuisines. These remote users are now also able to understand their dietary and fitness choices better by talking to our 1,000+ expert nutritionists, fitness and yoga trainers. A nutritionist based in Bengaluru can help users from 15 different locations. This increase in efficiency and economies to scale helps make healthy living more affordable and accessible. Artificial Intelligence too, helps in reducing cost and increasing access to quality health advice that otherwise won’t be feasible.
With the ongoing pandemic, our app has become more relevant than ever, and that’s also because health and fitness are now top concerns. HealthifyMe just crossed 30 million users.
The pandemic has steered us in various other directions too. Getting everyone vaccinated was critical for India to become healthier and fitter. So, in May 2021, we launched VaccinateMe in 10 different languages in partnership with CoWIN. The platform used CoWIN APIs to help people find the available vaccination slots in real time in people’s area or district. With this, we hoped to fast track the inoculation drive in the country and encourage people to get vaccinated at the earliest.
But, besides the pandemic, we are still amidst an epidemic of lifestyle diseases like obesity and diabetes. And these diseases put populations at higher risk of hospitalisations. We have helped India fight obesity and lose one crore kg of weight. We will continue to innovate and help our users reach the best version of themselves.
Tushar Vashisht is the co-founder and CEO of HealthifyMe, India’s largest digital wellness platform
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