Amidst our busy everyday life, we often tend to give less importance to our emotional and physical health. Running behind money, jobs and responsibilities, we all tend to leave behind the most significant element of life. How many times have you skipped breakfast when you were late for work? Don’t you feel guilty about missing workouts just because you were not in the mood for it? The objectives that we fix for ourselves are easy to spoil as we do not owe an apology to anyone else. When it comes to health, you cannot make that compromise. That is why apps like GrowFit are the best way to stay fit and be healthy.
GrowFit (1) is a healthcare app which uses artificial intelligence to guide you towards your fitness goals. It was founded by Jyotsna Pattabiraman in September 2015. The best aspect of this application is that it has two separate platforms for physical and mental health. The app named GrowFit is especially beneficial for those who wish to attain a healthy weight loss by following a diet plan and regular exercise. It also helps to bring you all overall wellness and reduces the risk of diabetes and cholesterol. The app for mental health and well-being is Grow Self.
Another remarkable feature of Grow Fit is that they deliver healthy, nutrition-packed food. It is planned and put together by the expert nutritionists who know what is best for your body. Grow Fit also has several registered food technologists and product experts. The menus are created after much research and studies, thus making it the best diet for your fitness journey. GrowFit has a number of physical and mental health experts who will be assigned to guide you. Through direct chats and calls, you can keep in constant contact with them while they analyse your progress and plan more suggestions. The customers are given guidance on all kinds of health topics regarding skin, hair, sleep, nutrition, and exercise. You also have access to many expert diet plans that will help you achieve the weight loss goal or maintain a healthy weight.
The Founder
The founder of GrowFit, Jyotsna Pattabiraman, is a graduate from Stanford University. She had worked at companies like Kleiner Perkins and Menlo Ventures before she came up with the idea of GrowFit. She had a successful career in Silicon Valley, USA and worked in top positions at firms like Oracle, eBay, Yahoo, Cybercash etc. She moved back to Indian from the United States in 2008.
Jyotsna helped to establish many companies in Bangalore like OnMobile and Knowlarity. She also has a fellowship at Melton Foundation and has been on the Board of Directors at Melton twice.
After coming home to India, Jyotsna realised that many of her family members and friends were not leading a healthy lifestyle which was evident in their poor diet and lack of physical activity. She knew that proper nutritious meals would be the first step to improve the physical health of the people in our country. Grow Fit has two types of meal plans. The Lean Machine scheme focuses on quick and effective weight loss by an intense diet plan. The other one is the Stay Fit strategy, which provides the users with a slow weight loss over some time.
She soon came up with a separate application intended to help the mental health of people. Our culture is bound to an age-old stigma which marginalises anyone who is mentally ill. The ignorance often steers to a decline in emotional health, leading to many conditions like depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder etc. It is only when a person finally commits suicide that people start worrying and sympathising for them. Jyotsna wants to help people improve their mental health before it’s too late. The app named Grow Self mainly focuses on the youth who deserve expert help to improve their conditions.
The progress of GrowFit
The people of India have gradually started to realise the importance of physical and emotional health. It is estimated that above sixty lakh people in our country face death each year as a consequence of lifestyle diseases. Due to the poor way of life, more than 300 million citizens are at the risk of developing such conditions. GrowFit is a feasible solution to this problem since a nutritious diet is the most vital part of physical fitness. It can prevent the contraction of such diseases while also improving the average health of our fellow natives.
Ever since GrowFit was established in 2015, they have been received very well by clients mainly from the ones in Tier two and tier three cities. The statistics imply that more than 60 per cent of Grow Fit users are from such areas showing their attention towards health-related issues. The company started its food business by setting trail packages of their meals all over the country. It was widely received, and they started witnessing more order placements. Within a couple of months, the GrowFit app had more than one lakh downloads, and the users had made use of around 60,000 diet plans.
By March 2016, the number of food orders from GrowFit had increased five times. The income from chat subscriptions also saw a considerable rise every month. Grow Fit regularly studies the traits of lifestyle diseases in India to create and modify their menus accordingly. In the beginning, they simply focused on calorie-regulated meals and diet plans but through their continuous research, GrowFit has been able to develop more effective diets. The enterprise is backed by GrowthStory, an entrepreneurship platform which supports other nutrition food businesses like FreshMenu, BigBasket etc.
GrowFit: Fundings and Acquisitions
The major investors in GrowFit are Manipal Group, SAR Group, GrowthStory, The Grover Trust etc. The seed round of funding was conducted in October 2016 which raised 911,500 dollars. In September 2016, Grow Fit had acquired Drink King, a company that provides nutritious beverages. Later in June 2017, a Series A funding was led by Manipal Group, and it raised 4.5 million dollars. The company hopes to use this latest investment to make better use of the data from medical reports. They also hope to implement more technology to make GrowFit the all-encompassing destination for healthcare.
