Samsung NEXT Ventures has announced an undisclosed amount of investments in Healthifyme, the startup that offers fitness and nutrition monitoring via its app. This is the very first investment of the Silicon Valley-based investment department of Samsung in India, which was launched in 2013 and was renamed to Samsung NEXT in July 2016 by the Samsung Global Innovation Center (GIC). In addition to Samsung NEXT, existing investors IDG Ventures India, Inventus Capital, Blume Ventures and NB Ventures participated in the Series B round, which provided HealthifyMe $ 12 million (approximately Rs 77.2 crores). The last financing round was led by the Russian Sistema Asia Fund.

The HealthifyMe app, which is claimed to combine artificial intelligence with personalized personal coaching by people, is touted to help users eat better and lose weight. What sets the app apart from other fitness solutions is the calorie counter, which uses a large database of more than 100,000 Indian foods to help users keep track of their daily dietary intake. The app also uses algorithms for learning machines in addition to more than 150 million data points to help nutritionists and trainers to serve paid users significantly. Furthermore, in 2017 alone, HealthifyMe reported an attractive growth of four million users, spread over more than 200 cities, and generated $ 4.5 million (approximately Rs. 28.9 crores) in ARR revenue (Annualized Run Rate). The app also enabled existing users to keep 200 million food items, trainings and more than 10 million messages with their nutritionists and trainers. Similarly, the Singapore startup at the end of last year launched her AI nutritionist Ria, who offers her paid users a way to limit their unhealthy dietary habits by asking nutritional information about their daily diet.

All that has largely persuaded Samsung NEXT, and of course other investors to make the investment decision. "HealthifyME is already the clear market leader in India and that represents a huge business opportunity," said Amit Garg, Principal, Samsung NEXT Ventures, in a blog post

Tushar Vashisht of HealthifyME, in a separate press statement, unveiled that the new financing is aimed at expanding the app in other emerging markets, with the exception of India, to eventually meet the growing demands of fitness and food monitoring. "We are already India's go-to health app, this funding will help us to launch in other emerging markets where obesity and lifestyle diseases are growing exponentially and it will also help us expand our supply portfolio to related products and services that our customers need, "said Vashisht, the CEO of HealthifyMe.

According to AppAnnie, HealthifyMe has almost 10 percent of the market share in the health / fitness category in India. The startup has recently been registered on the GCC market (Gulf Cooperation Countries) and is already the top three on Google Play in the UAE.

The HealthifyMe app already supports leading portable platforms, including Google Fit and Apple Health. We can expect integration with Samsung Health to serve features such as a localized calorie counter on different Gear Fit models.

In addition to the focus on end users, Healthify Me has put together a digital employee welfare program and worked with business customers. including P & G, Unilever, Accenture, Cognizant, Shell, Philips and others. The startup also acts as a digital / preventive partner for various Indian healthcare providers such as Medanta, Manipal and Apollo ACODE. These are the few roads that are now also being opened for Samsung NEXT.

At the beginning of 2016, HealthworkMe, led by Vashisht, had its headquarters in Singapore and received a $ 6 million series A funding (approximately Rs. 38.5 crores) led by IDG Ventures India, Inventus Capital, Blume Ventures and NB Ventures.

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