Meet Tushar Vashisht, the US-return Indian founder who built HealthifyMe, an AI-powered fitness app with ₹229 Cr revenue in fy24

India has one of the world’s most diverse food cultures, but until a decade ago there was no reliable way to track what people were eating. 

Calorie-tracking apps existed, but they were built for Western diets. They could calculate the calories in pizza or pasta but had no data for dal, roti, or idli.

For millions of Indians trying to lose weight or improve their health, the tools simply did not work.

The absence of reliable tools became a problem Tushar Vashisht felt firsthand, and one he was determined to solve.

Meet the Founder – Tushar Vashisht

The story of HealthifyMe begins with its founder, Tushar Vashisht. He was born in Haryana and spent much of his childhood moving from one town to another because of his father’s job in the IPS. 

Constantly adapting to new places and people became second nature to him — a trait that would later prove invaluable as an entrepreneur.

After finishing school in Delhi, Tushar went to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied computer science and economics. He graduated in 2007 and started his career at Deutsche Bank in San Francisco. 

Working on Aadhar

Surrounded by the pace of global finance and technology, he should have been on a secure career path. Instead, he felt a growing sense of dissatisfaction. 

“I knew very early on that I wanted to work for impact. Making wealthy institutions wealthier was not fulfilling enough,” Tushar recalled.

That clarity pulled him back to India. He joined the Aadhaar project as a volunteer under Nandan Nilekani, an experience that gave him a close look at how technology could shape lives at scale. 

Around the same time, he found inspiration in Swades and in his family’s tradition of returning to India after studying abroad. The decision to come home felt natural.

As Tushar puts it, “India is a great gateway for a global story. It just felt so much more satisfying to be closer to my roots and to work for impact.”

A Personal Health Struggle

When Tushar moved back to India, he gained 25 kilograms in less than two years. The change in lifestyle, limited walkable spaces, and poor diet took a toll. To fix it, he built an Excel sheet to track his calories.

The deeper he tracked, the clearer the problem became. There was almost no structured data for Indian food. 

“Most of what was happening to me was because of food. There was a big vacuum. There was no data on Indian nutrition,” he explained.

At the same time, he conducted social experiments to understand Indian diets. He lived on ₹100 a day and later on ₹32 a day to see how lower-income families managed their meals. These experiments highlighted the poor nutritional quality of diets in India and made him realize the scale of the problem.

The spreadsheet he built started circulating among colleagues and friends. It was no longer just a personal tool. It had the potential to solve a widespread problem. 

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Healthify Me

The calorie-tracking spreadsheet went viral among people who wanted to manage their diets. Encouraged by the response, Tushar and his friend Matthew converted it into a website, and later, the HealthifyMe app in 2012. 

The early journey was marked by hustle. The team operated out of a farmhouse on the outskirts of Delhi before moving to a modest office in Indiranagar, Bengaluru. Interns formed the bulk of the workforce. 

Tushar recalls those days clearly, “My desk was literally at the entrance. People would walk in, see this clean-shaven young guy, and assume I was the secretary.”

Despite the scrappy beginnings, the value was clear. HealthifyMe became the first app that allowed calorie tracking for Indian food, from dal-chawal to samosas, which Western apps did not cover. 

This unique positioning gave it early traction among Indian users looking for structured weight-loss solutions.

The HealthifyMe app was no longer just a side project. It was beginning to look like a scalable business.

Finding Co-Founders and Building a Team

Scaling required technical strength. This came in the form of Sachin Shenoy, an ex-Google engineer who joined as co-founder. Sachin quickly recognized that the existing code base could not support large-scale growth. “I’m going to delete all the code and rewrite this,” he told Tushar.

The two had different but complementary working styles. Tushar pushed for speed, while Sachin focused on stability and scalability. 

“My approach was launch yesterday, while his was to make it 99.9% stable. That tension worked beautifully,” Tushar said.

The startup’s early culture was defined by scrappiness. Many of the interns who worked without traditional job security eventually became full-time employees. Convincing their parents to let them choose a startup over corporate jobs was a challenge, but the vision kept the team together.

With the right mix of vision, engineering expertise, and determination, HealthifyMe had set the stage for its first real test.

Their First Brush with Failure

By 2014, HealthifyMe had traction but no stable source of revenue. The company ran out of money, and staff went unpaid for months. For Tushar, it was a make-or-break moment. 

“Running out of money is almost a rite of passage,” he reflected later.

The breakthrough came when the team discovered the potential of a coaching model. By pairing users with certified nutritionists and trainers, they found a way to monetize. Clients were willing to pay for personalized guidance that went beyond calorie counting.

This discovery became the cornerstone of the HealthifyMe business model. It showed how a digital app could scale human expertise with the support of software. The traction helped HealthifyMe raise its seed round, backed by Micromax and several high-net-worth individuals.

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Scaling With AI

The next phase of growth came with the introduction of artificial intelligence. Initially, a coach could handle about 40 clients. With AI tools, that number jumped to 250.

HealthifyMe’s AI journey began with internal projects like Artemis and Amadeus, which eventually led to the creation of Ria, the AI coach. 

Ria could answer questions about nutrition, provide suggestions, and support users in real-time.

As Tushar describes it, “We built a GPT 1.0 for health and fitness before GPT was a thing.”

This innovation shifted HealthifyMe’s positioning. It was no longer just a service with software support. It has become a true AI-powered fitness solution. This strengthened the HealthifyMe business model, giving it a scalable edge that competitors struggled to match.

Marketing and Brand Strategy

A strong product needed equally strong marketing. HealthifyMe invested heavily in digital-first campaigns, influencer collaborations, and corporate partnerships with companies like Unilever and Philips.

The brand also explored contextual advertising through platforms such as MyHoardings, making sure it reached consumers where they were most likely to engage. 

“Our goal was always to look larger than life, even when we were scrappy,” Tushar said.

The HealthifyMe marketing strategy positioned the app as modern, data-driven, and aspirational, helping it stand apart in a crowded health and fitness market.

The COVID-19 Pandemic 

The pandemic became a turning point for HealthifyMe. With gyms shut and mobility restricted, demand for digital fitness solutions surged. HealthifyMe coaches became “COVID warriors,” helping clients manage fitness and nutrition virtually.

At the same time, the company launched its VaccinateMe initiative, which helped more than 25 million Indians find vaccine slots during the peak of the crisis. 

The project, known widely as the HealthifyMe vaccine alert, was built in collaboration with WhatsApp and supported by Vinod Khosla.

This period cemented HealthifyMe’s role not just as a fitness app but as a platform that could create real social impact.

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Funding Journey & Investor Relations

HealthifyMe’s funding story mirrors its resilience:

• 2012–2013: Accepted into the Microsoft Accelerator in Bengaluru - crucial for early validation and mentorship.

• 2013: First angel round of ₹1 crore, anchored by Aadhaar colleagues like Srini Raju and angel investors such as Sashi Reddy.

• 2015: Micromax invested strategically, providing not just money but market credibility.

• 2016–2017: Series A funding from Inventus Capital, Blume Ventures, and IDG, helping scale the coaching model.

• 2018–2019: Series B to build AI capabilities, raising from Sistema and existing investors.

• 2021: Series C round (over $75 million) led by LeapFrog, Khosla Ventures, and others.

• 2023–2024: Raised $20 million to expand into the U.S. while also optimizing costs and reducing net loss.

Each round was tied to a business inflection point - a pattern of near-failure, pivot, and new growth.

Revenue 

Revenue models at HealthifyMe evolved through moments of crisis, pivot, and disciplined execution:

• FY21 (ending March 2021): Revenue stood at approximately ₹86 crore, marking the early monetization phase.

• FY22: Revenue more than doubled to ₹185 crore, up 2.15× from FY21. However, losses surged to ₹157 crore, a dramatic increase from just ₹19 crore in FY21.

• FY23: HealthifyMe crossed the ₹200 crore revenue mark, achieving ₹229 crore in operating revenue, a 23–24% year-on-year increase. Losses narrowed by roughly 10%, down to ₹142 crore.

• FY24: HealthifyMe’s Indian entity reported a standalone operating revenue of ₹206.3 crore, a 9% decline from FY23. The company has indicated that its India business is expected to be cash flow positive in the near term.

Collaborations and Tech Leadership

In 2023, HealthifyMe made global headlines when it partnered with OpenAI. Its product demo was featured at OpenAI’s Dev Day, highlighting how HealthifyMe was using advanced generative AI to improve user experience.

The company is also working on features like food recognition through photos and real-time AI-driven coaching. 

“OpenAI is usually ahead of others and we are ahead of others in our domain. It makes for a powerful partnership,” Tushar said.

This collaboration underlined HealthifyMe’s position as not just an AI fitness app in India, but a global leader in AI-driven health solutions.

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The Vision Ahead

Looking forward, Tushar’s vision is simple but ambitious: to “healthify a billion people.” The company is expanding into Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the United States.

“Imagine if you had a coach who speaks your language, knows your data, and can even order your groceries or schedule yoga sessions,” he explained.

AI has lowered barriers to global expansion. Multilingual databases and generative AI allow HealthifyMe to scale across cultures without heavy localization costs.

As Tushar describes: “Imagine a coach who speaks your language, knows your data, and can even order your groceries or schedule yoga sessions.”

The long-term ambition is to make personalized health advice nearly free and accessible worldwide.

From a calorie-tracking spreadsheet to a global health-tech company, HealthifyMe’s story is an example of Indian innovation making a worldwide impact. It blends personal passion with cutting-edge technology and social relevance.

Whether it was building India’s first nutrition database, creating the HealthifyMe plans that millions subscribe to, or stepping up with the HealthifyMe vaccine alert during a crisis, the company has shown that health-tech can be both profitable and purposeful.

Author’s Note:All quotes, figures, and insights in this article have been sourced from publicly available interviews, podcasts, and published articles.