HealthifyMe takes you from flab to fab, and it just received $1 mn in funds

Google awarded the app a top developer badge earlier this year, reports Tech in Asia

Fitness and health-tracking app HealthifyMe is now one of India’s best-funded start-ups in the space, after it received $1 million from Dubai-based investor Neelesh Bhatnagar. It’s the second fundraise for the Bengaluru-based start-up. Its overall funding now stands at $7 million.

HealthifyMe plans to use the majority of the funds to expand to international markets – namely, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. It’s also looking to upgrade its tech and expand its management team in India.

The start-up competes with other fitness apps such as FeetApart, MobieFit, and Obino. FeetApart raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Nielsen Singapore’s executive, Vishal Bali, and other angel investors in February. Orobind, GetActive and MobieFit have also raised funds in the recent past. 

Launched in 2013 by Tushar Vashisht, Sachin Shenoy, and Mathew Cherian, HealthifyMe started as a calorie counter app. Its most exciting feature is a calorie counter specific to Indian meals. Western-made nutrition tracker apps typically do not include a breakdown of nutrition information that works with Indian food habits.

The company monetises by offering weight-loss programs and then connecting participants with over 150 nutritionists and fitness coaches for online consultations. It claims that its programs are effective in the prevention of lifestyle diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. The app just hit 1 million downloads on Google Play, the company said.

Google awarded the app a top developer badge earlier this year, which means it got the Google Play editorial staff’s vote of confidence. In 2015, it made the Google Play store’s list of top 50 best apps in the health and wellness space.

This article was published on Tech In Asia. You can read it here.