The wellness industry is gaining momentum each day, spreading awareness around health, immunity, nutrition, and fitness. With the outbreak of the pandemic, people, especially the millennials and Gen Z, are increasingly realising the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle. This has given rise to many startups offering a host of products and services such as nutritional foods, fitness equipment, wellness supplements, coaching, and consultation.
According to IBEF, the global wellness industry is expected to reach $372 billion in 2022. The Indian wellness marketplace is estimated to reach $10.6 billion by 2025, from $110 billion in 2016.
Here is a list of startups that are striving to fulfil the fitness and nutrition needs of wellness enthusiasts.
wellOwise
Saher Mehdi and Manish Kumar founded in 2018 with the aim of preventing lifestyle diseases and providing precision diagnosis.
Saher Mehdi and Manish Kumar, Co-founders, wellOwise
The startup provides personalised dietary and supplement recommendations virtually to help people stay healthy. It also assigns lifestyle coaches who provide clinical and fitness consulting to stay fit.
wellOWise works on a subscription-based model and offers two programmes—RewiseTM Basic Programme (priced Rs 12,500) and RewiseTM Advanced Programme (Rs 24,000).
wellOWise targets people in their mid-20s to mid-40s as the founders believe this is the time when people need to engage in a healthy lifestyle and start taking care of themselves to reduce their risk of diseases in future.
The startup says it works with research labs in the UK and Turkey.
Wellversed
Gurugram-based healthcare and nutrition startup was founded in 2018 by Aanan Khurma, Aditya Seth, and Ripunjay Chachan. It offers diet planning and nutrition guidance through experts.
Cricketer Yuvraj Singh with Team Wellversed
It also sells products for dietary regimes such as intermittent fasting, gluten-free high-protein immunity, and diabetes on their platform. These products are aimed at enabling dietary shifts without the need for any behavioural change.
Wellversed works as a rollup company for wellness brands. It acquires, operates, and scales up high-potential digital-first brands to build a modern-day ‘Unilever-style’ house of brands for health and wellness.
Currently, Wellversed owns four brands—Wellcore, Zero Sugar, Ketofy, and YouWeFit. The startup has innovated an internal tech tool named WINCI, named after Leonardo Da Vinci, to assimilate creative and analytical information in one place to create long-lasting brands.
Wellversed is backed by prominent investors, such as Jubilant, Huddle, and Indian cricketer Yuvraj Singh, and leading angels such as Alok Mittal, Govind Rajan, Sanil Sachar, Rohit Chanana, and Tejinderpal Miglani.
StepSetGo
Mumbai-based is a fitness app founded by Shivjeet Ghatge, Misaal Turakhia, Zaheer Khan, and Abhay Pai in January 2019. It provides users with fun incentives for investing in their own fitness.
Cricketer Zaheer Khan
Indian cricketer Zaheer Khan is the face of the business, which aims to make exercises fun, easy, and long-lasting.
The app keeps track of the number of steps a user takes in a day and pays them with coins, which can be redeemed at the in-app ‘Bazaar’. StepSetGo’s Bazaar offers health and wellness products and digital gadgets.
The app is available for both Android and iOS users and has a 4.4 rating on Play Store and a 4.8 rating on App Store. It has around 1.2 million active monthly users and 9.5 million downloads.
StepSetGo appeals to a diverse audience—students, homemakers, police personnel, and corporate honchos.
StepSetGo has won the Atma Nirbhar Bharat Innovation Challenge in the health and fitness category and has crossed Aarogya Setu in terms of user engagement.
MyHealthBuddy
Gurugram-based MyHealthBuddy, founded in 2017 by Asheesh Grewal, helps people connect with lifestyle coaches and stay fit.
Asheesh Grewal, Founder, MyHealthBuddy
It provides holistic and personalised lifestyle coaching to help people lose weight, maintain a healthy lifestyle and a good diet, and stay away from lifestyle diseases.
The solutions are designed to focus on important aspects of health and fitness, including exercise plan, sleep quality, stress management, diet plan, and habit formation.
MyHealthBuddy focuses on women’s health and helps women deal with postpartum depression and weight issues, hypothyroidism, and PCOD.
The startup charges Rs 7,500 to Rs 10,000 for its online services, depending on the needs of the users. Apart from India, it also has a client base in New Zealand, Australia, and the US. International clients are charged between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000.
ParaFit
Delhi-based ParaFit, founded in 2018 by Paraj Primlani, is a health and nutrition startup that offers curated meals along with customised diet plans, strategies, recipes, and training.
Paraj Primlani, Founder & CEO, ParaFit
Through the startup’s app, users can track their nutrition, diet, and step-count and also get access to healthy recipes.
Customised diet plans and delivery of healthy food are available in Delhi, Gurugram, Ghaziabad, Noida, and Faridabad.
Users can select plans according to their needs, and a nutritionist is assigned to help customise their diet. At least five diet plans are offered in different categories, such as diabetes and PCOS.
The startup says it has successfully ‘transformed’ over 7000 users. According to the company, more than 50 percent of its revenue comes from subscription plans, while the rest comes from food delivery and online nutrition consultation.
