Bengaluru: Healthcare start-up HealthifyMe on Friday announced that it has secured $12 million in a series B round of funding led by Russian conglomerate Sistema Asia Fund. Other investors including Samsung NEXT, Atlas Asset Management, Japan’s Dream Incubator, IDG Ventures India, Inventus Capital, Blume Ventures and NB Ventures also participated in the round.
The HealthifyMe platform available on iOS and Andorid helps users manage their diet and workout schedule, and track progress. It also connects them with fitness trainers and nutritionists to create exercise and diet plans.
The start-up, which was founded in 2012, intends to use the fresh round of funding to expand its presence in India by offering new products and services like health foods, diagnostics and insurance. Additionally, the company intends to use the funds to strengthen its artificial intelligence and data science capabilities.
Apart from functioning as a platform for connecting users with trainers, HealthifyMe also has an AI-powered health assistant named ‘Ria’ which was unveiled in October 2017. Till date, HealthifyMe users have tracked 200 million food options and workouts, and exchanged 10 million messages with their nutritionists and trainers.
However, the platform does not provide any heath tracking device; instead, it has in-built support for other fitness trackers and wearables in the market. The company also works with corporate clients like P&G, Unilever, Accenture, Cognizant, and Shell among others.
HealthifyMe claims to have grown by 3.5 times in 2017 to 4 million users, with a presence in more than 200 cities in India, and is generating an annualized run rate of $4.5 million. The company recently launched in the Gulf market, and has plans to expand into similar markets in the future.
“Our vision is to build the world’s largest online health and fitness service. We want to help millions of consumers achieve their goals by engaging with nutritionists and other health experts empowered with artificial intelligence. ‘Ria’ our AI nutritionist introduced last quarter will have a game-changing effect on fitness/nutrition access to Indians,” Tushar Vashisht, chief executive officer at HealthifyMe said in a statement.
“We are already India’s go-to health app. This funding will help us to launch in other emerging markets where obesity and lifestyle diseases are growing exponentially. It will also help us expand our offerings portfolio to affiliated products and services that our customers need,” Vashisht added.
