This ex-Flipster's startup combines AI and Ayurveda for health monitoring

Forty-one-year-old Gaurav Bhalotia realised there is a lot to health beyond medicine, and that our bodies need to participate very strongly to recover from any illness.

Gaurav thus started FindMyHealth in 2018 with a vision to give individuals control of their health, and to help them stay healthy and recover quickly. However, the seeds of the current product was sowed in April 2019 after the successful Proof of Concept (POC) of its computer vision technology.

The platform allows users to get a peek into their inner health based on an Ayurvedic framework. It starts by analysing the face to identify the body constitution and visual aging or obesity, which is followed by a conversation with its AI doctor to identify the state of the inner health. 

“This is then used to generate a detailed health fingerprint of the user and identify recommendations for herbs, foods, and lifestyle. It also offers a personalised supplement, which compounds all the recommended herbs into a single pill for supporting health and recovery,” says Gaurav.

The B2C startup has about 10,000 users at present.

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Inspiration behind the idea

A former employee of Oracle, Kosmix (later WalmartLabs), and Flipkart, Gaurav got the idea of FindMyHealth from his own health experiences, where he moved from being a sceptic towards alternative medicine to start believing in the body’s power and participation in recovery. 

“There is a lot of subjectivity in both discovery and assessment in the alternative medicine space today. The journey started with an attempt to use technology to bring the power of Ayurveda and alternative medicine to more people,” explains Gaurav.

The biggest gap which Gaurav saw to start with was helping people identify what herbs to take. There were many people consuming Ayurvedic herbs, but most of it was through ad-hoc recommendations from friends and family.

Gaurav says, he is passionate about holistic health and traditional Indian health sciences and medicine. FindMyHealth grew out of his belief that everybody deserves a healthy living and that it is viable to take control of our own health through personalisation and AI. He likes to address his startup as a scorecard for one's inner health.

The biggest challenge for him, however, was to get Ayurvedic doctors, nutrition experts, engineers, and data scientists to think and work together on a common platform as well as in creating a strong positive awareness of Ayurveda among the users.

Based in Bengaluru, today the startup is a team of eight employees including engineers, data scientists, doctors, and nutrition experts.

How it works?

FindMyHealth mainly targets people in the age group 25-45. Gaurav says, this segment can be broadly divided into two categories. One is the users who are health conscious (HCIs), and are willing to invest in supplements that will help them be at the top of their health. The second set of users are those with chronic or lifestyle conditions, especially those newly diagnosed. These users want a way to manage or reverse the condition without significant trade-offs in their lifestyle. 

The startup uses AI and mobile web to do remote ayurvedic assessment of the person on the phone.

“We have built a unique selfie assessment using computer vision that allows identification of an individual’s constitution using their selfie. We have also taken the relevant body of knowledge and converted it into a multi-dimensional inference network at the backend. This allows us to connect users to relevant suggestions or actions, depending on their individual health situation. We find herb recommendations that are unique to an individual’s health situation and convert them into a single pill,” explains Gaurav, who is also an IIT-Bombay graduate.

The startup also offers personalised supplements, which is custom built for users’ health condition. Currently it offers the whole set (assessment, personalisation, and shipping of the personalised pill) for Rs 999 for one-month’s supplements. However, the startup is yet to monetise its services.

FindMyHealth has also partnered with Hyderabad-based startup Healtheeliving to deliver Ayurveda compliant diet plans to its customers.

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Industry perspective

According to reports, the Ayurveda market in India is estimated to be around $5 billion, and is growing at a CAGR of 14 percent yearly. There are other players in the space like 1balance delivering personalised supplements, and Jiva Ayurveda, Dr Vaidya’s, Cureveda, Organic India, etc., trying to create a new-age brand for Ayurvedic supplements.

However, FindMyHealth considers personalisation through AI as its USP.

“It enables us to identify the unique health situation of an individual and connect them to appropriate targeted actions drawn from Ayurveda and other natural techniques. Another strong aspect of our technology is that it can be done in a non-invasive manner and remotely on the app,” says Gaurav.

The angel-funded startup is currently working on personalised diet plans by using AI, which will be Ayurveda compliant. According to Gaurav, the team is focussing on fine tuning the technology and monetisation model before raising additional funds.

The team is also building a symptom checker based on Ayurvedic theory, which will also give an idea of disease progression.

(Edited by Megha Reddy)