Decoding gut health; Sports For Life
MicrobioTx has developed an AI-powered test that uses a simple finger-prick blood sample to profile an individual’s gut microbiome and generate personalised health insights. Meanwhile, Sports For Life wants to turn structured sports training into a national, tech-enabled platform.
Hello,
Come to terms with AI, or be left behind.
PricewaterhouseCoopers’ US CEO has warned that partners who fail to embrace AI have no future at the firm. Paul Griggs has said that employees who resist AI could be replaced by those who are AI-ready.
In other news, oil prices soared on Thursday as the crisis in West Asia intensified. This has revived inflation concerns and urged the US Federal Reserve to take a more cautious stand on interest rate cuts this year, Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, back home, housing finance platform Weaver Services has raised Rs 1,450 crore across two funding rounds led by Premji Invest and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
With strengthened capital and expanded scale, Weaver aims to emerge as a key player in India’s inclusive housing finance ecosystem. It is focused on underserved borrowers, including self-employed individuals, small business owners, and first-time homebuyers in Tier II and III markets.
ICYMI: What if you could bully AI and get paid for it? California startup Memvid is offering $800 a day for donning the role of an ‘AI Bully’ and spending eight hours testing the patience and memory of artificial intelligence. The position involves exposing a chatbot’s inconsistencies as it forgets, fudges or hallucinates, and being brutally honest about it.
In today’s newsletter, we will talk about
- Decoding gut health
- Sports For Life
Here’s your trivia for today: What is the summer equivalent of hibernation?
In-focus
Decoding gut health
Most microbiome tests available today rely on stool samples, which many people find inconvenient, expensive, and time-consuming. This gap between scientific research and practical adoption is what MicrobioTx is trying to address using AI and a finger-prick test.
Founded by Akanksha Gupta along with microbiome researcher Dr Palok Aich, the Bengaluru-based startup has developed an AI-powered Gut Function Test that uses a simple finger-prick blood sample to profile an individual’s gut microbiome and generate personalised health insights, nutrition and probiotic recommendations.
Key takeaways:
- Traditional gut microbiome tests typically analyse microbes directly from stool samples. MicrobioTx takes a different approach by analysing metabolites—chemical compounds released by gut microbes that circulate in the bloodstream.
- “Instead of measuring microbes directly, we measure the metabolites they release into the blood,” Gupta explains. “The correlation between these metabolites and gut microbes has already been established in scientific research. Using machine learning, we can trace those metabolite signatures back to predict microbial patterns.”
- At the core of the platform is a patented AI and machine learning model developed through research collaborations with institutions such as AIIMS and NISER.
Startup
Sports For Life
After scaling Dealshare to unicorn status, Sourjyendu Medda stepped down as CEO in early 2024. But the entrepreneur in him kept scouting for opportunities. His next bet? Youth sports in India. The shift among urban families towards structured, outcome-driven sports training led Medda to build Sports For Life, a tech-enabled coaching platform aimed at professionalising the largely unorganised market.
Bengaluru-based Sports For Life wants to turn structured sports training into a national, tech-enabled platform, much like Cult.fit did for fitness.
Key takeaways:
- Sports For Life positions itself as a full-stack sportstech startup, blending global coaching standards with AI-led performance analytics. The company currently operates academies in Mumbai and Pune, offering training in football, tennis, chess, squash, and table tennis, with plans to add cricket.
- Led by Medda as CEO and Armaan Tandon as COO, the 140-member team plans to expand into Bengaluru and the NCR region in 2026. Beyond coaching, Sports For Life also organises competitive formats such as the SFL League (football), reinforcing its belief that sports and education together shape a healthy, disciplined, and successful life.
- The startup is also preparing to launch a scouting and engagement platform, enabling young athletes to create profiles, store performance highlights, and showcase talent for professional scouting opportunities.
News & updates
- Job cuts: The owner of most IKEA outlets worldwide has said it would cut some of its office-based workforce. Ingka Group said in a statement that 800 roles may be affected as a result of a simplified organisational structure and increased focus on core retail business.
- Quarterly forecast: Accenture has forecast quarterly revenue below estimates, as clients remain cautious about spending on large IT transformation projects and prioritise cost control and short-term initiatives, amid an uncertain economic environment.
- Labubu movie: The widely popular Labubu dolls will soon have their own feature film, Chinese toy company Pop Mart and Sony Pictures have announced. A Labubu movie, with live action and computer-generated animation, is in “early development”, the two companies said in a statement.
What is the summer equivalent of hibernation?
Answer: Aestivation (or estivation) is a state of animal dormancy or ‘summer sleep’.
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