According to WHO, obesity has doubled since the turn of the century, and almost 40% of all adults globally, i.e. 2 billion people – are overweight or obese, resulting in 4 million deaths per year.

HealthifyMe an AI driven health and fitness app startup, took up this problem statement 10 years back and has been building and solving for individuals to curate and track a healthier diet.

The company crossed 25 million downloads recently and is on track to hit $50 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) in the next six months.

In today’s episode we’ve brought Tushar Vashisht, CEO and Co-founder of HealthifyMe, to talk about the journey of creating a monetizable healthcare & fitness platform in India.

They’ve recently raised $75M in Series C round led by LeapFrog and Khosla Ventures, with which it plans to further expand into India and South East Asia markets besides making inroads into North America. Currently, it generates around 25 percent of its revenues from overseas markets.

During the episode, Tushar talks about the casual and unexpected moments when he got several breakthrough ideas, why they consider minor consistent pivots essential for thriving in the long-term and much more.

Notes –

02:29 – Roller coaster moments in HealthifyMe’s journey

06:02 – Strengths as a founder

08:21 – Essence of assembling a team for experienced mentors as board members

13:11 – Experiencing living like an average Indian

15:17 – Early concerns with HealthifyMe’s model during initial funding

20:52 – Advice for entrepreneurs: When to pivot vs when to be persistent?

26:19 – Myth: Indians don’t pay for digital healthcare services

28:05 – Growth hacks like VaccinateMe

29:25 – Getting the first 1000 customers

 

Read the full transcript here:

 

 

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 00:02

Hi. This is Siddhartha Ahluwalia, welcome to the 100x entrepreneur podcast. today I have with me Tushar Vashisht, founder of HealthifyMe which is India’s and Southeast Asia’s largest weight loss and fitness app with millions of life transform. Tushar, Welcome to the podcast.

 

Tushar Vashisht 00:19

Thanks, Siddhartha, it’s a pleasure to be here as well.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 00:22

Tushar would love to understand from you, the current scale of healthifyme. And, you know, what are the different services and products, it’s enabling millions of lives?

 

Tushar Vashisht 00:36

Well, Siddhartha, our vision is to healthify a billion people, we have hit 25 million so far, closing the 30 now, we are slated to cross $50 million in our annualized run rate revenues by this coming January. And we’ve helped just in the pandemic alone, we’ve helped, you know, the world lose about 10 million pounds away and move to much healthier and fitter outcomes, you know, reduce their impact on diabetes, hypertension, PCOS, and cholesterol. So that’s our scale right now.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 01:10

Tushar, It has been a nine-year journey at HealthifyMe if I’m correct?

 

Tushar Vashisht 01:15

It has been one, it’s been a slow-cooked in a well-baked one. With a massive inflection point, I guess, in the last couple of years.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 01:24

And what have been some of the roller coaster moments in this journey?

 

Tushar Vashisht 01:30

Well, you know, startup life is a roller coaster on a weekly cycle. Yeah, and I think that never stops. But I think some of the more memorable ones have been in 2014 or 15 timeframes, when a couple of years and we had a fantastic product or app and won the best app on Google Play store multiple times, and had also actually achieved, you know, 4.6 ratings out of five. And we were the highest-rated health and fitness app in the country. but we didn’t have a revenue model, we didn’t have a significant business model. And that was, that’s something that we did, we discovered actually the hard way by running out of money in 2014 and 15. And fresh to the wall, we realize that you know, there’s a huge demand and people paying for access to nutritionists and trainers who could guide them towards their goals. And you know, and therefore this amazing symphony of data and Human Services started in our company you know, and so that was an interesting breakthrough. The second one probably was in 2018 when we had large enough data sets with us to be able to create an AI model that could coach our customers with near efficacy of human service providers and we launched the world’s first consumer AI product called Healthify Smart, now it was launched as a pilot but it suddenly took on a life of its own it cannibalized our own high costs nutritionists and trainer services and it took us a while to kind of get that you know symphony in order and then finally it ended up being a fantastic you know synergetic upgrade tool for us as well so you know, eventually forged what it is what HealthifyMe today. So that’s been a very interesting road that self-innovated itself and was serendipitous in nature.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 03:16

And were there any moments that you said you know; I might need to change what I’m building or I need to take a break from entrepreneurship because the situation or circumstances went out of hand in these last night?

 

Tushar Vashisht 03:30

No, I think the challenge has always been very exciting and thrilling, I think challenge brings in adrenaline and excitement and I think of it as a video game right like you know, as children we used to play those video games where you go and you know suddenly a crocodile will come and then a monkey will come and then you find some fruits and it’s like Mario or something you know and that’s what running a startup is. So that part is actually pretty exciting. I think I’ve there have been times when I’ve gotten bored or what I do when I felt the challenge was not exciting enough especially coming hot off a very crazy challenging situation and then winning that it gives you very high levels of excitement and thrill and then you know there are moments of lull and that’s the time when you feel like may have made you feel like giving up at times and you know and maybe there are other pursuits you want to take on but I think what I’ve done an excellent job if I may say so myself is that usually I go on and you know create an even bigger challenge and a massive opportunity. So, when I feel bored when I’m feeling low and I’m like, I’m not sure maza nhi aa rha types is when I know something’s around the corner that’s going to get me hot and off and running. And I pulled that off I think almost every 18 months. So, it’s like a year and a half cycle. My family knows about it too.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 04:39

So, you reinvent yourself like every 18 months?

 

Tushar Vashisht 04:43

I would like to believe so. You know, I would like to believe that I find my own. I paint my own target and then I go run my own pawns against it. You know, and then I think I absolutely love doing that. I hope I continue to do that, keep finding purpose.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 04:58

So would like to understand your strength as a founder, and how you have evolved over the period of the last nine years?

 

Tushar Vashisht 05:05

Well, I think my strengths as a founder, perhaps more than anything, would be to be able to paint a vision and lead a team towards that vision. I think that’s been incredible. Not just the team, but in the whole ecosystem, right? So, it’s painting a vision and then making it happen as a reality. And really mobilizing people, resources, investors, customers, everyone around it. So, I think that has probably gotten us to where we’re at. And the second thing would be is always innovating. So, you know, I think our company has had multiple inflection points where it has innovated and re innovated and reinvented itself and taken on greater ambitions our most recent pursuit is to go global for example and to become more relevant for lifestyle disease reversals and all of those have happened because I think we never stay still. Those are good strengths of perhaps the company and therefore me and I think how I’ve evolved as I’ve gotten more resilient over time I think problems, little problems used to really trouble me as in the early days where you know, small issues would feel like they would be earth-shattering and so now I think, you know, I think I’ve become a lot more resilient to issues that come along the way

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 06:23

And over a period of time what has helped you grow right? Has it been reading, is it been your mentors? Like Bala?

 

Tushar Vashisht 06:34

funny name mentioned Bala’s name, he’s been quite a significant mentor and influence for me personally, I think I have leaned on him for insight and guidance throughout these last nine years and it’s been a great person to really brainstorm with on difficult situations, I think but you know, and besides Bala as well there have been many other advisors and mentors throughout the journey who’ve had their roles to play in their time. Bala is probably the most significant one but there are many others who’ve had their roles to play overtime and we’ve been board members who’ve been advisors etc. I really strongly endorse that any founder starting a company should probably structure a team of more experienced people who you trust and create a mentor you know board that can actually guide you thing that was singularly most important. Because they’ve seen it before right as I can now, for example, tell a new founder, things that are very obvious to me but that probably won’t be for the person who’s just starting up. I think it makes a huge difference to get someone who is seasoned and experienced ideally an ex-founder

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 07:37

And what are the other aspects right on reading on maybe you know, listening to podcast, what has worked for you too?

 

Tushar Vashisht 07:45

honestly, it’s going outdoors so I love hiking. Bangalore is fantastic for that right? So, I love hiking, I love traveling, I love going on weekend trips quickly and then going off on a hill so being with nature really helps. always without fail, cool me down, calm me down. I’m an investor in camp monk with the camping company and you know, I love utilizing their services, for example, they’re fantastic camping options around Bangalore. So being in the outdoors, being with nature, being in the open skies is always been extremely helpful and valuable to me, I think.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 08:23

when you were bootstrap, you used to work I remember out of Prime Venture Partners office in Whitefield right. So how did you build an ecosystem of the supporters right that kept you going funds were low?

 

Tushar Vashisht 08:40

We were very scrappy. So, our goal was you know why pay for stuff you don’t have to pay for and one of the things I think we took pride in is in the first two years I don’t think we paid rent, or we paid nominal rent, you know, we were going from our, you know, mentors and friends’ offices to others offices, you know, begged and borrowed places. We started off with Microsoft. We started initially with my friend’s dad and somewhere near Delhi in some farmhouse for a little while. Then we moved here to Microsoft ventures accelerator. Then we requested actually good friend Ramesh from Ottoman ventures, you know, if we could if he had some extra space some company had moved out, we could just kind of lodge ourselves there. Then we move to Khosla labs with the Srikanth and who was my you know, ex-colleague and the senior person at Aadhar and a very close family friend actually now, Hemant and Sunita. And then we moved over to the angel prime ventures place so we shuttled around and, in the middle, we found a flat, my flat where I was staying at you know, we moved on my company there because Chalo wohi par kaam kar lete hai, and then, you know, so we kind of I think we changed eight addresses in two years. But effectively everywhere between an MG Road and Whitefield, whoever will give it for near free prices. And yeah, I think we managed to do that and that was quite cool actually.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 10:00

Tushar, I would like to understand, you know, how did your previous experience before starting HealthifyMe, working with Aadhaar and there’s a famous article about you how you lived on 30 rupees a day, that’s right. How did that help you shape up the problem at HealthifyMe and the team culture belief around it?

 

Tushar Vashisht 10:22

At a meta-level, I really do believe that a founder best thrives by getting inputs and signals from the least expected areas or from everywhere basically. So, I think those two definitely had a very large influence on me and certainly helped me but I think even on a daily basis like going for a run, eating at a restaurant, reading a book, watching a TV you know you’re always having your problems at the background. So various inputs, always you find some breakthroughs and connects that will definitely help you in your course. So, in fact, I do like to maximize my time in non-work environments as well which I think helped me in the work environment even today. So that synergy is something I really believe in. It’s not just an excuse for slacking off. I think it’s very helpful. Ideas just connect from you know, solutions just form but I think Aadhaar was and 100 of that day was single-handedly very important. Aadhar was when I learned when I rub shoulders with some legendary founders like Bala like you know others who are prime minister’s founders Sripathi Sanjay you know, of course, Khosla Labs, Nandan himself, Rajesh one of the cofounding members of TIBCO and who would subsequently be on my board so I rub shoulders with all these guys Sanjay Jain you know and learned about what does it take to build things and start things and you know all of them had legendary stories Pramod Barma, who was the chief architect and you know, all these guys had done there and been there before and so learning from them and their experiences and life stories was fascinating. Knowing that you could paint a bold vision like Nandan did you know things around to make them a reality was quite inspiring then it gave me a real taste of India of what the country is about what people have traveled the length and the breadth of the country really sort of immerse myself within it with average Indians and that’s what I did so then I started to live like an average Indian and then like a poor Indian for a while to really understand the cross-section of the country so it was a customer you know, experience immersion for me in a way but on a personal level, I gained a lot of weight when I was at Aadhar, all these Marathalli, didn’t have many food options that were healthy and you know, we were working and eating all the time didn’t have time to work out, no Indian foods. So, I realized that if I can get 20 kgs in 2 years, this is a huge problem. And I realized it was I mean, the world had doubled in obesity between 2000-2015 and now it’s tripled to 3 billion people and by 2030 and you know, sort of self-experience the problem and then I lost that weight also so I realized that you know, there is a science to how you can go about losing weight, you know, how you try behavior change and understand what you eat and therefore eat better. And that got accelerated at the 100 rupees a day experiment because I was trying to count what calories were in my food that I was eating at 100 rupees a day and there were no tools so I built the first version sitting in Kerala and farmers had on the Excel my cofounder literally typing away calorie values. So, you know, so that’s where Healthify was born.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 13:19

I still remember right, early 2015 kind of timeframe that Healthify may calorie tracker was I think one of the most popular and viral tools in healthcare were real people going to gym used to track their calories and you had I believe still have the largest database of Indian foods and now Southeast Asian foods and other foods you know around the world.

 

Tushar Vashisht 13:47

Yeah, look, I think we introduced calorie counting to this part of the world and we certainly are the number one in that space even now. And now we’re expanding it to other parts of the world where it doesn’t exist today properly in other emerging markets, even in North America where this is an older science, we are reinventing it by bringing in AI to it, by bringing in human services providers who can actually guide people to better outcomes. Today we have probably the most efficient health and fitness tool in the world with a combination of human service AI calorie counting all at play and but yeah it was certainly we made this happen in this country for sure

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 14:31

And early on you raise funds from Blume, a lot of angels like Pallav Nandini, and then you know Inventus. What have been some of the hurdles before you know, investors understood the space in raising funds?

 

Tushar Vashisht 14:48

The biggest thing was you know, I think at that time the concern used to be will people pay for this service at a large time, etc. right because we were pre revenues so I think for them long before we had revenues was very hard. So, we took one crore angel cheque from some guys well, frankly, who were willing to bet on my track record and whatever I had done at Aadhar and most of them were Aadhar people only. And after my first Angel round the seed round, which happened also was just at the breakthrough of some elements of revenue. But again, I think it was kind of combined many of the names you mentioned, was with the, you know, with, with what we could do with the company, and the vision that we had, but it needed a lot of hustling back then, you know, startups aren’t getting funded like they are right now access to capital was still limited. And, this was an unproven space in India, we were, we were not trying to, there was no easy benchmark in the US as well, we couldn’t say we tried to be Uber of India, you know, Amazon of India, we had to we what we were doing was fairly first principles. What has happened in the last two, three years is that suddenly the companies in our space have exploded worldwide. I mean, there are companies in the US that are making half a billion-dollar revenue run rate right now. There is us as well, suddenly surging to 50 million run rate, these are real consumers paying right. So, the last three, four years and particularly through the pandemic, I think that realization has come through that the greatest threat to our civilization is actually in the over nourishment problem, is in the obesity issue. And, that’s what’s going to be the burden of health care coming ahead. And even customers are now becoming more and more aware to spend around keeping themselves healthy and fit. So, I think it was just, you know, the timing back then was probably bigger, more than anything else. The timing was probably too early at that time. The timing is blazingly hot right now. But what that allowed us was a deep meditation on the subject. You know, it took us a few years, but I think we know our space probably more than anybody else does in the world. And that gives us a unique advantage.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 16:45

And can you share the process of the recent fundraise, the 75 million fundraise from the Vinod Khosla fund? how you went about it, how you went about planning it? What were some of the challenges?

 

Tushar Vashisht 16:57

I think the hardest one to raise was a million-dollar seed fund in 2015. When we really hustled, term sheets pulled, term sheets came in, I mean, my God, we were out of money. And you know, it was just we diluted probably the most we’ve ever diluted ourselves because it was very early, the timing was weak, the company was small was very limited revenues. And you know, we had to fight for people to believe. And it only got sequential easier, series A was easier, Series B was even easier. And our series C was frankly, probably the easiest in that sense because there was data, there’s evidence there is a proven market, and there is a global phenomenon that’s happening. The only thing was this time we had we made sure that we reach out to a global set of investors. So, Vinod Khosla of course I’d actually the first time, I met us in the 14-15 timeframe as well, or his team had rather. And then I had the opportunity to pitch to him in the 2018 timeframe as well once but you know, so they’re good because they keep tracking companies and founders, multiple times. So, Khosla ventures were probably is the third interaction in which they invested, they came in late, but they came in strong when they had conviction around us. Similarly, leapfrog was a global investor, you know, who believes in health as a very important sector. And, we reached out to them, we reached out to some Indian funds as well, but we were selective this time. And we were global in our outreach and I think that played to our round really coming together as a strong ground, the right set of investors who believe in us and you know, that’s how it’s happened. But my god was that million dollars so hard back then so you know, to any founder listening to it, this seed rounds, the hardest guys? maybe not so maybe not anymore. I mean, the current market is pretty crazy. I think you can probably lift capital much more easily than one could back then.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 18:36

And I believe it would have taken what, six months seven months to raise that 1 million cheques back then.

 

Tushar Vashisht 18:42

Yeah, probably, even more, I think it took us like nine months because we were in conversations with the fund who then pulled the term sheet. Then we were in conversation with the fund where we didn’t like the guy so we actually backed out and then there was another fund that came through and I think it was a fourth option that finally stuck so one out of four-term sheets finally clicked properly. So, you know, it was a nine-month process and we were begging and borrowing from families and friends and all my buddies had given me a loan and my credit cards were maxed out. So that was a tough point. I remember facing my team and said guys, you’re now volunteers. I said we can’t pay anyone anymore. Thankfully, no one quit, though. Everybody survived. And you know, and we got out of it. So, two young founders oftentimes say that obviously you will run out of money once just be ready for it. It’s going to come whenever it comes like high-fiving each other because you’ll be like, okay, I checked that box. Now I can, you know, move ahead from that. So hopefully it won’t happen twice. But sometimes that also happens.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 19:43

In the last nine years, there have been multiple pivots. And you have been highly persistent, right? You’re one of the most persistent founders that I know. How do you choose the right and advice for an entrepreneur listening to the podcast, when to pivot and when to be persistent?

 

Tushar Vashisht 20:00

You know, I think one should my personal philosophy is that micro pivots are a constant name of the game you have to keep innovating and improving yourself. So, if you’ve noticed our past also, it’s a very logical sequence. It’s not like we were making shoes, and now we decided to, you know, sell vegetables. That’s not what we did. We have been pursuing the vision of healthifying a billion people. And we’ve been pursuing the promise of delivering fitness, we are losing weight and eating better. You know, and I think that has not changed. So, what has changed is that there’s an evolution there, calorie counting took us only so far, adding the right set of nutritionists, trainers, physicians are an experiment that worked, and then the AI evolution worked, and now we’re working on healthify 2.0, where we’re sort of bringing other signals in logically, that makes sense. Now there are 1000s of signals, one can bring in diagnostics, devices, connected meters, glucometers, you know, weighing scales, so we’re trying to figure out which signals make sense and trying to figure it out, how else can we complete a promise better, you know, traditionally food through supplements through, you know, through activity trackers, through exercise, devices, etc. So how can we promise that? So, but you know, how can we fulfill that. So, it’s always been further fueling that one singular promise and following one vision, something we’ve pivoted in our vision and approach to customer promise, but we’ve clearly pivoted in micro pivots and innovated to make our business better. And to make a solution more accessible, make it more affordable, make it more impactful. So, I think my advice would be is stay persistent in your vision and your goal, and your customer promise, but be fluid about your approach. And feel free to experiment always continuously. So, in 20-80%, 80% on the current, and 20%, trying to find something that is better can potentially be even disruptive to your own game. But if it’s better, it should win.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 21:55

tell me how which other personal and business processes that you spend the most time on?

 

Tushar Vashisht 22:03

It’s evolved over time. Now Actually, it’s a lot more around, you know, Investor Relations Corp Dev. That kind of work takes up most of my time. And you know, I think probably international expansion, new initiatives. So basically, new initiatives, international Investor Relations cooperatives are now taking up a more sizable amount of time. But I think the evolution was that you know, first, the first thing to give on to others was probably marketing finance business roles, I think that continued the product helm for the longest time. And then finally, I gave off the product helm as well. But then I still continued running, product operations, marketing, finance, all these units more independently, now managed to consolidate many of them got some phenomenal leaders, people like you know, Anjan, our Chief Business Officer, and others in the team who really sort of, you know, driving a fantastic work in the company. And I’ve managed to have the privilege to now pursue, you know, the bleeding edge area of certain businesses more experimental in nature, or more expansion focused in nature, as well as winner focus on making sure we are taking the right strategic calls. And so yeah, that’s been my journey in these 10 years.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 23:13

Has building a healthcare startup for India and from India have been a very tough journey for the initial seven years?

 

Tushar Vashisht 23:25

tough is a subjective word. Was it a long journey? Yes. I don’t think it’s necessarily tougher or harder than others. It was certainly a joyful experience. I think even the lows were exciting. The highs were exciting. Probably the middle parts were boring. But outside that, both highs and lows were a pretty exciting roller coaster. Right? So, you enjoy both the negative G’s and the positive G’s. So, I think that’s how it’s been. And therefore, because you go through a lot of negative and positive G’s, is it a tough thing to do? Yes, it is. You know, I think the only way to handle it is by growing resilience. Taking negative G’s and positive Gs in a bit of the same spirit not getting too excited or too depressed. But that’s something that I’m still getting better at it, which I’m sure other founders do as well. But did it require a lot of time? Did it require? You know, a lot of patience for sure. You know, and there are other health tech companies also who haven’t really hit it out of the park, right? I think we will be one of the few new ones that are really doing so. Pharmeasy, for example, developed a good track record, and a lot of us are doing it in the last couple of years. So, I think it’s a matter of timing. I think building in India for health tech was probably a tough thing to do five, seven years ago. It’s probably a relatively easy thing to do right now. You know, at a professional level, at a personal level, I think it’s the journey of every founder is equally challenging.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 25:00

And there has been a myth, right? And which your investors also had that Indians don’t pay for digital healthcare services? How did you break that myth?

 

Tushar Vashisht 25:13

You know, the only way to prove it, we’ve been doubling each year for the last four or five years without fail and with clear metrics that are pointing in the right direction, on you know, profitability and paybacks, etc. So, it’s just execution. And the only way to prove those investors wrong was by delivering on results, you know, and then we’ve can derive some we have derived certain joy in doing that, for sure, you know, is to be believed it will happen as happening.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 25:43

So how was the journey, right. Because for a large part of the time, you had been very frugal, you said the seed round of 1 million was very tough. How has the journey been of organic growth, some of the things that you push the lever for organic growth if you can share those?

 

Tushar Vashisht 26:00

you know, I think we don’t do as good a job as we should. But our business itself leads to an organic growth piece, right. So, when people lose weight, when people do a fitness transformation, they love sharing that story with others and others join them for that. And I think so our business fundamentals and because we’ve been true to delivering a promise, an average customer loses about five kgs weight in 12 weeks, our average count go down from around 8.1 to six and change within a period of six months, right. So, a certain period of six months was when I was talking about the weight loss as well. And I think these are the results that speak for themselves that drive that organic momentum. You know, but outside that, you know, there are a few sorts of campaigns or growth hacks, in our case, which have worked, which have not really been designed as growth hacks, but were designed out of conviction, but ended up driving value. And one of the recent examples were, vaccinate me, you know, we launched a tool to help vaccinate India, built on top of the government API’s, it was a pet project by Manan, who now acts as my chief of staff and a couple of other with our head, you know, a director of engineering. you know, they kind of build it up in three, four days, and we launched it and you know, and before we know it, and then with Bertie, who launched under 45, we hired them, when we combined our forces, we’ve helped 25 million people find their vaccine, but that also creates a strong, positive, resonant word of mouth. You know, brand recall for healthify. So, you know, that is an example that’s worked. And there are several others like this that we’ve accomplished through the years, which are basically how can we help? And we’ve always been the guys who I think we’ve always turned to our customers and asked the question, how can we help? and you know, you and with technology, we found answers, and that has helped accelerate our brand.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 27:47

And you said, you know, the initial part was to prove that getting paying customers, and you have doubled every year for the last four to five years. How did you know to get your first 1000 paying customers?

 

Tushar Vashisht 28:06

You know, it was hustle and selling. So first few 1000 paying customers, I remember I was making calls to some of our customers who you know, who had demonstrated high intent and trying to convince them about our services. So, it was initially sales lead. And with me being the sales guy, and a few people around me being the salespeople, and then we started to see that free trials work really well. Like the problem is that unless we get people to experience what we are offering, people didn’t understand it. So free trials were the model that really sorts of emerged for us as a way to move the levers and then targets really helped internally by I think by keeping specific revenue goals and targets for us. There’s no, it’s not happened naturally, that we are doubling every year. It’s also because we set that goal thing. Every January, we kind of know what we are doing for the next January and the whole year, prepares ourselves for that and develops enough redundancies. And in as we call it, orbit changing, there’s an entire culture around it like if you come and talk to anybody in the company right now. For example, literally, anyone in the firm will be telling you about how they are achieving or coming to January’s goal, and what they are doing to contribute towards that. So, there’s a very clear, crisp alignment towards, you know, doubling each year, which is almost mandatory, like we believe that we genuinely believe that skies will fall on our head if we don’t do it. I do and I know that the team does too. So that rabbit pursuit is also been helpful.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 29:30

And how do you bring this clarity right as a founder for the whole team because there are many moving metrics and moving things?

 

Tushar Vashisht 29:38

you take your best call but I think we’ve seen that is working for us now. So, you make a decision and then it works for you. So, we know that by driving or doubling each year’s growth pursuit, it’s been valuable for us to get to where we are at and we know that if we continue to do so we wouldn’t be able to afford it for it and will continue to grow further. So, everybody’s aligned because there is some history here and there is proof. But the first year I remember it was just keeping an audacious goal first year it was triple, I remember we were doing, we were doing 25 lakhs a month and it was I think, December. I’m trying to remember but I would like to say it was December 15. Or it could be December 16, We were doing 25 lakhs a month and we went to an offsite. And you know, we said guys, we need to focus on this coming January has to be $100,000 a month. And that was an audacious goal to go from 25 lakh to 67 lakhs. dollar rate was 67. And people love that challenge. And we delivered 67 lakhs. Exactly, that January. So sometimes keeping a stake in the ground that’s big and high is a way of rallying people around it. Our new war cries will have 1 billion people. I’ll tell you in five years have achieved it.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 30:58

definitely your aggression, your vision is clearly headed in this direction, right? So, by the time I think we speak again, in four or five years healthify would be generating our revenue of $1 billion.

 

Tushar Vashisht 31:14

that’s also a goal. Healthify a billion people is the first goal. And that is the second

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia 31:22

thank you so much Tushar, it has been wonderful conversation, sharing you know your low part of your journey, how you have hustled through the nine long years, and how you have achieved what you have achieved. Right, you know, Rome was not built in one day and healthifyme definitely, you know, it took a lot of vision, a lot of initial steps of building the entire ecosystem, from you and your team, which we are seeing results now.

 

Tushar Vashisht 31:52

Thank you. it’s a pleasure as well. parting thoughts for anybody who’s building or working on a startup is, you know, just be very proud of yourself. It’s a very hatke thing you’re doing and still is, to an extent requires guts. The other thing I would say is to enjoy the journey because it’s might be a long one. And it’s very important to enjoy it. Don’t let things that you don’t snooze on things that you like doing. Take your time, even if you are not working but doing other things, they’re probably going to connect and help you My greatest breakthroughs have come outside the office, in balconies with friends while hiking somewhere while being offsite. So, I would highly encourage in fact taking time out and pursuing personal passions as well as work passions and keep yourself balanced. It’s going to be a marathon. And is to really enjoy especially the lows, and not you know, kind of think of them also as a fun part of the roller coaster and the highs and you know, and I think it’s it. That’s the only thought I’d love to share with anyone who’s listening. But I’ll say that it’s been an absolute pleasure. And hopefully, we’ll speak sooner than when we would have already healthify a billion. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

 

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