Why we invested in HealthifyMe

Today I’m happy to announce our investment in HealthifyMe, which makes mobile apps providing AI-driven diet and exercise advice to Indian mobile users and also represents our first investment in that market.

I was introduced to the HealthifyMe team by Manu Rekhi at Inventus, who is an existing investor in the company. I was impressed by the experience and determination of the team -- Tushar, the CEO, who once challenged himself to live on less than a dollar a day to better understand poverty, and Sachin, the CTO, was a long-time engineer at Google.

HealthifyMe is already the clear market leader in India, and that represents a huge business opportunity. After all, India has the second-largest population in the world, with a large and growing economy, as well as a thriving middle class that is increasingly digitally connected.

Most importantly, HealthifyMe is working to solve a major problem in India, a country where obesity is a growing concern. Indians are increasingly looking for ways to improve their health, as trends around wearable sales and gym memberships there show.

HealthifyMe tackles this problem by combining artificial intelligence with personalized coaching by nutritionists and trainers. The company has built the largest database of Indian foods with over 50,000 recipes represented, giving it a huge advantage in the local market.

But the real innovation comes from the machine learning algorithms HealthifyMe has developed around nutrition and fitness. With more than 150 million data points, its assisted coaching system helps nutritionists and trainers to serve significantly more clients than they would be able to without its platform.

The technological innovations that HealthifyMe has introduced -- using artificial intelligence to provide personalized diet and fitness information and coaching -- not only benefit its user base in India, but sets a higher bar for people who keep tabs on this space in the U.S. and elsewhere. Its appeal is global.