One in every five Indians is obese. This startup gains VC muscle to change that

India is currently witnessing rising numbers of people in the middle class becoming obese. A lot of the Indian population now relies on processed foods that contain a large percentage of trans-fat and sugars. Obesity is considered the core of many health risks like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

According to a recent study, junk food, alcohol, and a sedentary lifestyle are making one in every five Indian either obese or overweight.

Tushar Vashist is on a mission to “healthify” India with fitness app HealthifyMe. “We want to democratize healthy living – providing fitness and weight loss at a fraction of market value, while simultaneously providing employment to hundreds of nutritionists and trainers,” he says.

Reducing the flab

The HealthifyMe app allows customers to keep track of their diet and workout progress. Built for the Indian customer, the startup provides access to an Indian food database, a calorie counter for regional foods, and an exercise tracker for logging physical activities.

It uses a combination of cloud-powered software (its smartphone application), hardware (its wearable activity trackers and weight trackers), and human assistance (nutritionists, trainers and yoga instructors) to help people eat better, workout more, lose weight and become fit.

Funding from angel investors

Today HealthifyMe announced that it raised a second round of funding from a consortium of angel investors including Gopal Srinivasan of TVS Capital, Sashi Reddi of AppLabs, Amit Gupta of InMobi, Pallav Nadhani of FusionCharts, and others.

The fresh funding comes close on the heels of the recent Micromax investment in the company.

“HealthifyMe is harnessing outstanding tech abilities to make swasth bharat [meaning healthy India in Hindi] a reality with their app. It brings data on Indian foods to our mobile screens, backed by dietitians and nutritionists,” Gopal Srinivasan, chairman of TVS Capital Funds said in a statement.

Expansion mode