Digital health and fitness start-up, HealthifyMe, looks to expand across Asia, as user base grows.
HealthifyMe was founded eight years ago in Bangalore, India, and now has over 20 million downloads worldwide. It has received over US$35 million in funding from leading venture capital firms such as IDG, Inventus, Sistema, Samsung NEXT and Blume.
HealthifyMe is a one-stop digital health and fitness platform that provides personalised solutions to help users achieve their fitness and nutrition goals. It offers localised health content, calorie tracking, meal plans, fitness workouts and health advice – all of which are powered by a team of online nutritionists, personal trainers, and an artificial intelligence fitness coach.
The company adopts a holistic approach to health and wellness, accounting for nutrition and a balanced diet, rather than just exercise, to lead a healthy lifestyle. It has developed scientifically proven programmes which factor in one’s calorie intake and the right physical regime to achieve one’s fitness goals, including successful weight loss and diabetes management programmes.
It first launched its headquarters in Singapore and Malaysia in late 2018. The platform now has a user base of 500,000 in both countries and over 40 dieticians and personal trainers. HealthifyMe plans to quadruple its user base to two million people within the next two years and to employ 150 dieticians and personal trainers by 2022.
Further to its current plans, the company also looks to expand into Indonesia, Australia, and the Middle East within the next two years.
Mr Tushar Vashisht, Co-Founder and CEO of HealthifyMe, said, “We are very excited about our plans in Singapore, Malaysia and the region. We are especially delighted since, in less than two years, we managed to build a large community of 500,000 like-minded users in both countries who are deeply passionate about health and fitness.”
“Our focus has always been to offer highly localised experiences to users in each market, and we have worked hard to curate local health content, a database of over 10,000 local dishes and their calorie values, and a team of fitness experts who speak the local language and understand the market. We will continue to expand our food library, quality of coaches and technology support for both existing and new markets to meet the needs of consumers,” he added.
Mr Vashisht also noted that HealthifyMe has seen a 30 percent organic surge in user traffic, engagement and retention amid COVID-19 lockdowns in its markets, as gyms and fitness centres closed and more people began exercising at home. Moreover, the platform’s user engagement grew from five sessions per week to 7.5 sessions, while the number of foods users tracked on the app daily increased from four to eight logs.
During this period, the company launched HealthifyMe Studio, where users can learn how to do home-based workouts through live sessions with trainers. It now offers 50 daily classes conducted by trainers from all over the world – including sessions on strength conditioning, yoga, dance fitness and classes catered to senior citizens as well as children.
Besides targeting individuals, the start-up intends to partner companies to launch corporate health and wellness programmes for their employees. [APBN]