HealthifyMe App

HealthifyMe

India & Southeast Asia's largest digital wellness platform

Industry:

Health and Wellness

Region:

India, Global

35 0 m+

Users

2,000 0 +

Coaches

10 0 m+

Kilograms lost

HealthifyMe is a mobile health and fitness app combining the power of technology with real health services to deliver measurable impact. It is India and Southeast Asia’s largest digital wellness platform catering to more than 35 million users in 300+ cities. Over 80% of users have experienced a reduction in lifestyle disease indicators.

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of death worldwide, constituting more than 70% of all deaths or roughly 41 million people every year.

Of those, 85% of ‘premature’ deaths, classified as occurring between the ages of 30 and 70, are in low- and middle-income countries1. In India, roughly 4 million people die each year from cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, and diabetes. These diseases account for 16,939 disease adjusted life years lost (DALYs) per 100 000 in India2. Lifestyle factors such as unhealthy eating habits, tobacco smoking, a rise in alcohol intake and increased urbanisation are all key drivers of the growing burden of NCDs in the country3. The greatest increase in these factors is among low-income populations.

Globally, for low-income households, NCDs can put a significant strain on finances. These diseases on average lead to higher out-of-pocket healthcare costs than any other disease type4. This is in large part due to the chronic nature of these diseases and the high cost associated with long-term care. Medical expenses can often result in catastrophic health expenditure for the patients and their household, pulling them into or further into poverty and entrenching inequality in society5. Such high costs can also act as a deterrent for patients who should seek treatment, further adding to the incidence of premature mortality.

Premature deaths due to NCDs have a high socio-economic impact as the affected are most likely the main income earner inthe household6. On a macroeconomic level, NCDs reduce the productivity of the workforce, resulting in the reduction of overall economic output. It is estimated that every 10% increase in NCD mortality results in a 0.5% reduction in global annual economic growth7.

1 NCD Alliance, The financial burden of NCDs, 2022 2GR Menon, Burden of non-communicable disease and its associated economic costs in India, 2022 3WHO, Non-Communicable Diseases, 2022 4Ibid 5J Kazibwe, The household financial burden of non-communicable disease in low-and-middle-income countries, 2021 6 Ibid 7 S Behera, Uneven economic burden of non-communicable diseases among Indian households: A comparative analysis, 2021

Mean out-of-pocket-expense by type of disease and healthcare facility (INR) Mean out-of-pocket-expense by type of disease and healthcare facility (INR)
Source: Uneven economic burden of non-communicable diseases among Indian households: A comparative analysis, 2021.
Mean out-of-pocket-expense by type of disease and healthcare facility (INR) Mean out-of-pocket-expense by type of disease and healthcare facility (INR)
Source: Uneven economic burden of non-communicable diseases among Indian households: A comparative analysis, 2021.

HealthifyMe is a fast-growing, digital health service focused on wellbeing, fitness and nutrition, and the largest health and fitness app outside of the US and China. It aims to guide users through lifestyle and behavioural changes to improve health outcomes.

The company was established to meet the gap in affordable tools for food tracking in India, and to help curb rising obesity rates. Since that time HealthifyMe has expanded its products and services to include nutritional information, artificial intelligence (AI) and smart coaching, exercise libraries, telemedicine, and real-time metabolic health panels to address obesity-related risk. Its growth is driven by its nutrition and fitness coaching subscription plans for weight loss and disease reversal.

HealthifyMe offers a wide spectrum of pricing across a variety of products targeting both mass market and premium segments. As a result of its affordable services and freemium model, 80% of HealthifyMe’s free users are low-income while 60% of its users are in Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4 towns. More than half of the company’s users are female, with several of HealthifyMe’s products specifically targeting female health conditions.

In 2022, HealthifyMe launched HealthifyPro, its flagship fitness plan incorporating a Bluetooth-linked body composition scale in conjunction with a continuous glucose monitor that measures the reaction of the body to certain foods and activities.

Integration of this technology represents the next step in HealthifyMe’s ability to provide accessible preventative healthcare solutions. Already, these products have resulted in a decline in lifestyle diseases for 80% of Pro users and an average 15% drop in users’ blood glucose levels. The company continues to make disruptive advances on the product front, where they have been quick to take advantage of the rise of local language models and the advent of Generative AI for products such as their Smart Plans. The technology powers these plans to provide deeper insights to existing users and also enables greater scale across new markets by overcoming local language barriers.

AI-based smartplans driving growth AI-based smartplans driving growth
Source: Company data. *MAU: Monthly Active Users.
AI-based smartplans driving growth AI-based smartplans driving growth
Source: Company data. *MAU: Monthly Active Users.

In 2021, LeapFrog led a US $75 million Series C investment round into HealthifyMe, becoming the first impact investor to back the company and a significant minority stakeholder.

LeapFrog’s industry-leading consumer healthcare expertise has been a key asset to the company as it expands its footprint and grows its product offering. In particular, LeapFrog’s focus on affordability and understanding the preferences of low-income consumers has aided in the growth of HealthifyMe’s freemium service. Together with the company’s management, LeapFrog and its customer experience program set a clear target for low-and-middle-income consumer growth, which aided in the development of the company’s Smart and Coach plans.

Improving the geographic reach of the company has also been a key priority, in particular widening services that reach consumers outside of the major cities in India and across other markets such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and the US.

LeapFrog’s Talent Accelerator, its in-house talent development consultancy, has helped evaluate talent for HealthifyMe’s senior management and board while providing advice on board governance systems and best practices.

Impact management and ESG reporting has been a major focus of LeapFrog’s work with the company. At the outset, LeapFrog’s investment and impact teams worked to measure the company’s impact across the four pillars of scale, product quality, affordability, and governance. The investment team continues to work with HealthifyMe to improve its ESG capabilities by implementing new risk management systems. At a time when ESG factors are increasingly driving investment decisions, LeapFrog sees this work as critical to attracting further impact-focused capital to the business.

With the support of LeapFrog’s consumer healthcare expertise, HealthifyMe is pursuing its long-term target to ‘Healthify a billion people’ and become the world’s top AI-driven consumer health app in the next 5 years.

Last updated May 2022.