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Making India Healthier | Madan Somasundaram @ Sugar.Fit
264 Plays3 years ago
In this episode of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Madan Somasundaram, Founder of Sugar.Fit. Sugar.Fit is a healthtech startup that aims to reverse diabetes through a consumer-centric data-driven digital health experience.
An alumnus of The Wharton School and Harvard Business School, Madan has a commendable career working with J.P Morgan as an investment banker. He started Sugar.Fit with the objective of finding a stellar full-stack solution to a singular problem that creates massive impact for millions of people.
Around 80 million Indians are said to suffer from diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is the most common form which requires lifelong monitoring of sugar levels as no cure has been identified yet. Sugar Fit’s ecosystem combines medical expertise with deep technology to reverse this type of diabetes.
Tune in to this episode to hear Madan explain how Sugar Fit is blending data science and health science to enhance metabolic health.
What you must not miss!
- Continuous Glucose Monitoring Technology (CGM)
- Why getting right domain expertise matters
- Learnings from Atomic Habits
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Transcript
Introduction and Shoutout to Zencastr
00:00:01
Speaker
Before we start today's episode, I want to give a quick shout out to Zencaster, which is a podcaster's best friend. Trust me when I tell you this, Zencaster is like a Shopify for podcasters. It's all you need to get up and running as a podcaster. And the best thing about Zencaster is that you get so much stuff for free. If you are planning to check out the platform, then please show your support for the Founder Thesis podcast by using this link, zen.ai.founderthesis.
00:00:28
Speaker
That's zen.ai slash founder thesis.
Meet the Hosts and Focus on Founders
00:00:48
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay. Hi, this is Aurob. And you are listening to the Founder Thesis Podcast. We meet some of the most celebrated sort of founders in the country. And we want to learn how to build a unicorn.
India's Diabetes Challenge with Madan Thomas Sundaram
00:01:03
Speaker
Hi, I'm Madan Thomas Sundaram, co-founder of SugarFit. Did you know that India is home to almost 80 million diabetics putting a second in ranking in the world? And with the kind of sedentary lifestyle that we now lead, this number is only going to explode. And this is the problem that SugarFit is targeting. SugarFit is a health tech startup that uses a combination of data science and habit science to help people fight diabetes.
00:01:32
Speaker
Madan, the co-founder of Sugarfit, was educated in the West, but excited by the pace of disruption in India, decided to build something here. This conversation is full of amazing insights around disrupting healthcare, building habits, changing user behavior, and creating impact at scale.
Healthcare Disruption and Madan's Journey
00:01:51
Speaker
Here's Madan talking about his entrepreneurial journey, starting with his first venture, which was in the space of primary healthcare within Curefit.
00:01:59
Speaker
If you like to hear stories of founders, then we have tons of great stories from entrepreneurs who have built billion dollar businesses. Just search for the founder thesis podcast on any audio streaming app like Spotify, Ghana, Apple Podcasts, and subscribe to the show. After I went back to my last year, I graduated and I was then just at my back as soon as I graduated and moved to India and there was no plan of
00:02:28
Speaker
cure fit or anything. And I actually spent three months just talking to tons of people. I put up base first in Bombay and just met lots of people across all cities. I was very clear I wanted to do something in health, health care, deep health care, partly because I just felt this massive potential to impact millions of people. Obviously, if you create the right business, there's good outcome you can create, but also have very mission driven business.
00:02:52
Speaker
And see again, just technology will play a huge part right going forward. So I think those are the fundamental reasons. So yeah, so I spent two, three months. I was just at one point I was close to narrowing in on something in healthcare more on the diagnostic side. And again, at that time occasion I was speaking and it's like we are also looking at building out something in the primary care space to care fit.
00:03:13
Speaker
why don't you join hands and come and let's work on it together. So I actually also personally invested quite a bit of capital to and owned care and build care fit along with your fit as well. So that's how it started.
The Carefit Experience: Challenges and Lessons
00:03:30
Speaker
And it's been a great journey. I think fundamentally, it's been just great learning that in at some level, I didn't know India, I was very early to understanding
00:03:40
Speaker
Yes, I had all this theoretical knowledge, I had all this education, but obviously building a business in a different country is very different, and probably the right way is what I had done was to start somewhere, understand what happened, how the lay of the land is.
00:03:54
Speaker
meet a lot of people. So I think the amount of learning was incredible. I would understand this better. So Carefit was like a subsidiary of Carefit and in which you were a co-founder, like you put in your own money in it also. But it probably would have been largely funded by Carefit and like the majority stake would have been with Carefit. You were like an entrepreneur in residence, kind of a
00:04:20
Speaker
Yeah, you could say that. Yeah, he was the one vertical which we did that. And the whole idea was how can you really build out, again, we just thought primary care was just an open space. There was just a large amount of, in India, at some level, a broken system, you know, the wait time, the lack of technology, the kind of some level, lack of quality or transparency, you know, whether you go to a lab or a doctor's office.
00:04:46
Speaker
How can we really go out and build that out? So that was the whole limit of building out here. And we thought eventually at longer term, it makes sense to build this out. And there's no way to take a 20, 25 year view, even that long term of 15 year view that they won't be some very large business.
00:05:02
Speaker
Now you see many businesses in the US, one medical go forward, some in China as well. So the matter of time, still it comes here, right? So how do you really build that out? So what was the business model like? So in a way, practice also into primary care, you could say, but their model is to aggregate doctors and maybe digitize patient records. So what was the model for Carefit?
00:05:26
Speaker
So obviously, yeah, I think we were very clear that we wanted to always build a hybrid online offline solution. So we're probably the first we were, we actually went out and built primary care clinics, but wholly differentiated centers. So I don't think you'd find any of that in India, even in Europe, right? In fact, a lot of people came to their center. So the whole idea was we actually, because we felt in India, still the offline touch point for primary is still very important at that time also.
00:05:53
Speaker
early medicine was not allowed. There was a lot of restrictions on it, obviously COVID changes. So we ended up going and building about eight or nine centers, primary care centers, which were highly tech enabled centers, which was but full stack. It had doctors, your labs, your pharmacy, various other procedures, services. And the whole experience was pretty much tech enabled. You book an appointment, say at 10 through the app.
00:06:18
Speaker
You go there, there is no wait time. Your consultation, if it's a 10, will happen at 10. Your full body checkup, which we did, which we completely disrupted, right? A full body checkup in India will take half a day. We used to do it in 60 minutes, you're in and out, right? So it was, and everything on your app, right? Reports immediately come to it. You know which room you have to go to. So it was, how do we really bring this whole element of family, doctor? So you're in one place, one center, your experience is just
00:06:47
Speaker
amazing so you would never think and so we obviously went ahead and built it out right we actually launched it around 2018 mid 2018 and in Bangalore only we wanted to start in Bangalore and the idea was let's get to a few hundred centers across the country and then eventually once time medicine is allowed we wanted to attack both hybrid online offline we wanted to attack chronic care so we built it out and great planning right we were
00:07:16
Speaker
We started our first center, which is a 10,000 square feet center. We had doctors hired, staff of nurses, practitioners hired, pharmacy lab. We built our own in-house lab because we wanted to be fully vertically integrated and understand the business end to end. We didn't want to go aggregate doctors. And so we started it then and just it was obviously a great experience, one understanding how to work with doctors in India,
00:07:45
Speaker
How easy is it to get doctors into a place? How tough is it to have those conversations? Obviously, doctors, given experience with various platforms are still very skeptical, right?
00:07:56
Speaker
How do you really build that entire business and how do you make it work? On paper, it sounds utopian, like, you know, everything on your mobile app. I mean, it's something I would have loved to have as my primary physician replacement. But did it pan out that way in reality or were there like real world challenges which you discovered when you started implementing this vision? Like, what were the obstacles you encountered?
00:08:21
Speaker
No, no. See, a lot of us heard before, even before we went to it, we would always hear, you know, primary care centers in India don't work, it's tough to get the doctor. We face tons of challenges, right, as with any business. In healthcare, I think the biggest business in doctor is really important. How do you attract the right doctor? How do you retain them? How do you make sure the right monetary scheme
00:08:41
Speaker
How do you make the right money in primary care, diagnostics? How do you basically make this whole center offline business model? Because if it's one-off ticket items, it's not easy. But we fundamentally felt that the whole system at some level, and I still believe healthcare in India, it's at some level amazing for the population, just the service delivery, the cost, the level of technology in IPD is incredible. You don't even get that in the US.
00:09:09
Speaker
you wait two, three months. But at some level, the whole experience from a consumer standpoint, it's fairly broken, right? The average wait time today at the hospital clinic is 80 minutes. You just go there, you wait, the experience, you don't even want to go to a clinic. It's not pleasing. You go for a checkup and your whole day is taken. So we fundamentally felt that we will figure out the business model. Do consumers need it? And if consumers need something and they are willing to pay and there is
00:09:37
Speaker
They see value in it. There's absolutely a massive business you can build. And we do, you're right, in this same illogical at some level, but I mean, a lot of people talk more. Yeah, utopia.
00:09:50
Speaker
No, I'm not saying illogical. I'm saying, it sounds amazing. Okay. That's the word for it. Too good to be true. Okay. I mean, I would have loved to have this, but did it pan out this way? Or what were the stumbles? Like why isn't it all over the country? Why isn't there like, why isn't everyone going to a cure fit? So basically, see there's a bunch of challenges we face. Like again, making sure the business all works. How do you, like I told you, talk to it.
00:10:19
Speaker
If I were to judge in a year, year and a half when it was March 2020, we had about eight centers, a couple of centers which were larger in HSR in Ranagar working very well. The biggest way I judge it for a one-year business, a one and a half, it was loved by consumers. We had this rating scale of four, it was 3.85. The highest rated, it was more high rated than cult. 70 plus NPS for a healthcare brand, which was
00:10:48
Speaker
just not heard of. So people loved it. People absolutely loved it. We would hear stories where people would come out of different cities just to get the health check up there. And we were obviously thinking of other services. I think there were a few others. The problem with offline, we stumbled, which is also real estate, so important, the cost. So location becomes very important. Now with high rental, how do you make the whole thing work? But we felt we had got into what was working, and our whole plan was
00:11:16
Speaker
Let's move it from eight centers and now scale it once it works. But at that time, obviously, COVID hit us, or COVID hit very badly. And entire offline pretty much shut, right? And also, CureFit had huge offline footprint to be through their fitness centers, be through kitchens and this. And I think for sake of caution, this was obviously at that time the smallest business, the early business. And today, we still feel we should have had it. But it was, I think, being prudent with
00:11:46
Speaker
cash and we didn't know how long the pandemic would hold. We had taken a call in many instances to close all offline because of, so it was purely COVID, but we were growing 40, 50% month on month at that time, ratings were very high. And we see now a couple of players have seen that previous model and looking at it, but do I think if you take another say five, six of you, is there a possibility? I don't know, it's a different life or different time.
00:12:13
Speaker
Do I absolutely think it will work? It will happen and someone will do it here. Maybe at some level it could be a combination of our sides, you know, but customers loved it and it's very, very tough. I mean, as you know, for a customer to love a B2C product and that was actually the true testament.
00:12:30
Speaker
But also, of course, external factors also hit. If COVID didn't happen, I mean, I'm sure it could have been multiple cities right now. So you're saying fundamentally it worked, but external circumstances kind of spoiled the party. Yeah, see, it worked in the sense that there were still a lot of things for us to figure out, right? But that's what any startup, I think there's things to figure out on business model, how do you scale it in? What's the right format? How do you get the right make? Is it a franchise? Do you get doctors to invest?
00:12:57
Speaker
It was just from pure customer love. I had no doubt. Like every one, eight or nine people out of 10 who came there just loved it and would keep repeating. I think I would repeat it with 70% of someone who would come. So yeah, absolutely. It worked and obviously then external cycles kind of mitigated some of it. What did you do then? I mean, essentially the business you were running, which you had equity in kind of like it got shut down. Yeah. We decided to obviously move the offline bit, but obviously at that time what happened is
00:13:26
Speaker
We then obviously pivoted at that time, then the old telemedicine was allowed and we basically pivoted fully to digital light. And within a couple of weeks to three weeks, we completely changed and more for our customer side, because we had all the tech, all of it. So we pivoted to doing teleconsult, telemedicine across the country, at-home diagnostics. So various other solutions that we gave.
00:13:54
Speaker
But it was at this point where there was a lot of obviously debate on what we wanted to do. The O'Brien Overlying Ambition was still how we really build, obviously, digital health company. I think at that point, also, a few months into the pandemic, we saw pandemic is here to stay. And it was also right for CURFID to really focus on fitness first and really win that market and dominate entirely what they're doing. But there was obviously, for me, and I think it was very clear,
00:14:22
Speaker
I just still felt healthcare is just a massive opportunity. There's something to be done. And while doing all this care, right, if you had taken a three, four year view, our actual ambition was to really solve through physical and online chronic care actually, because obviously we had one-off consults, check-ups, but we really thought the business is to be in subscription business. And chronic care was always a massive space, right? So it was in that time where fundamentally believe that
The Birth of SugarFit: Chronic Care Focus
00:14:50
Speaker
There is no right time. And at that point, they had a lot of news across the world where a lot of chronic care startups just were doing extremely well in the US, who were at it. And I would follow them very religiously. And we felt that in India, there is no world in which I fundamentally believe that there won't be one or two very, very large businesses solving for chronic conditions. Because India is, unfortunately, the capital of chronic conditions, right? 160 million diabetes and pre-diabetes.
00:15:19
Speaker
hundreds of millions of people who have hypertension. So it was in this point, we thought, OK, offline is done. And I wanted to still do health. What is the real problem in health we wanted to tackle? And I looked at everything. I looked at everything right across the spectrum. We obviously had significant IP capabilities that we had built we could reuse and really go to market quickly or build a full stack solution. So try to understand every player that's doing everything in the US and India.
00:15:47
Speaker
Really, if you take a long-term, the problem to really solve in India is chronic condition, because there is no world in which this is sustainable, right? Because 10, 20% growth of chronic conditions can't be sustainable. There has to be solution. But again, it came to a share that we felt that the whole system today is broken. People are not solving for outcomes in chronic care. People are just doing transactional based services and saying, how do I just one-off, whether it's I'm a doctor, you know, help people like manage their condition?
00:16:16
Speaker
but not really deliver outcome. So it was that time in which I'm very, decided to very much focus on building a chronic care solution. And obviously there's various solutions, right? You can do diabetes, hypertension, but we really felt that let's really deeply solve for one condition first. Let's really understand it and build a stellar solution there. And if you build that, then you can go across chronic conditions later, right? And the second real belief we felt that for most chronic conditions,
00:16:46
Speaker
lifestyle plays 70, 80% of the role, lifestyle management, right? And this is where we understood also very fully. So can we combine all of that, you know, to really solve for people to build outcomes. And that's when we decided, we want to build this. And we also decided we will build it up very separately as a company, because obviously the DNA and that was a code learning, right? Building a medical business, near a fitness business is very different and tough, right? Because
00:17:14
Speaker
to be your track customers, you go to market, the brand story you build is very different. So from about September 2020, built an entire team and started building this position. Was this within that same legal entity or did you like resign from there and start a new venture? Yeah, so no, it's actually like a separate legal entity. It's a separate legal entity. At that time, obviously,
00:17:40
Speaker
At that time, we were doing all of the POCs. Today, it's a completely separate company, independent company with venture capital funding. And we were very clear. I think it was very clear we wanted to build it out separately. A lot of the team that we built, obviously, are the team that we have today that have managed to bring on board also includes a few people from Curefit as well, who also believed in this solution, who wanted to build this out.
00:18:05
Speaker
But again, it was a move where you felt that could have obviously built various other businesses at Curfield. But I fundamentally believe there's just a massive solution here, a massive outcome. And I think there was strong belief, even within, especially Mukesh. I mean, he's also been really believing in chronic care as well. But I was very clear, we had to build it out separately, separate team and decided to go out. How did you fund it then? Because this would have needed significant investment in technology upfront.
00:18:35
Speaker
Yeah. So as part of, obviously, I think our relationship on the center, we get a lot, we've got a lot of IP tech, a lot of the systems we've built that can't be reused, which we've used, also cure fit, I think early on, given I think relationship also committed money, right? And as you see, one of our investors also cured it, and we've got other investors. So I don't think, so we managed to get early on, I think once we figured out the product, figured out the solution, we bought all of that kind of in place.
00:19:05
Speaker
But it is today now, yeah, so it was basically the genesis then, knowing that there is just, I don't know, no world in which I don't believe there's a massive solution you can build. And I don't know, I don't think, I think our ambitions go up outside India as well, maybe right one day, because 90% of a person who needs to manage diabetes is the same. So can we really build that out separately? And obviously, at that time, there was a lot of questions, a lot of questions.
00:19:35
Speaker
A lot of people again ask me why do you want to go build this out again, do it separately, and do it just to kind of build out CF. But I think it was very clear. I think that, again, fundamentally my real passion is to build something very big in healthcare, right? And I don't think there's a bigger problem statement than to build this, right? I think it's also very mission-oriented to try to get people better lives, healthier lives.
00:20:01
Speaker
So we were very clear from day one, I think the entire team as well, we wanted to build a full stack solution, really drive outcomes. We didn't want to build any sort of aggregation tool for healthcare or any sort of things that will.
00:20:14
Speaker
Obviously, you can scale quickly, but we wanted to see how do we really tackle the solution. And that's how we went about it. So you had the idea that, okay, let's tackle diabetes. You are not from a medical background. So how did you build something which gave medical outcomes? Like how did you bring in that expertise? I actually think actually just the rule in life I feel is I
00:20:38
Speaker
I think everyone can learn any industry if they just at some level read. And I actually think having outside perspective is the best. I think many people who are involved in the industry will always try to question or not do stuff because they think it can't happen. And I fundamentally believe that expertise you can get, expertise there are great people you can hire, you can partner with to really understand. And so for me, on the outset, it was just simple.
00:21:06
Speaker
Is there a massive problem? Yes. Is there actually a solution available and have we seen it happen in silos? We've absolutely seen people, doctors, coaches in our network show massive outcomes for people in their own way, but in a fragmented way. So is there an opportunity to build a full stack solution and help it scale to millions of people to see outcome? Yes.
00:21:29
Speaker
Now, once we realized that, and then we tried to understand how are different players tackling it outside of India. In India, it was still very early, right? Now we'll play at scale, what are technologies you can use. And we also wanted to build a very technology-first company or product-first company, because we think that's the only way you scale to hit millions of people, right? And we wanted to do digital search, because obviously, different from primary care is diabetes can be managed, most of it is. We are not tackling Type 1, or we are not tackling very chronic cases.
00:21:59
Speaker
Once we understood that, we've also had a fundamental belief, and this was a DNA I learned from, I'm not sure if it is, get the right domain experts. And from day one, as soon as we decided we always hire or get the right domain expert to help us, you know, with the real domain expertise. So we got people who've been, I mean, today, our medical director, various other people, you know, that some of the most senior endocrinologists in the country are, and
00:22:25
Speaker
and presidents of societies who've helped build a health-shaped space to really see what are outcomes, what are people saying. And once we, I think, had an overall structure in place, understood, we then really ran a lot of pilot studies. So it was very much grounds up. It wasn't just quickly launch something. We actually took a lot of time to understand pilots, see what users want, and then did it. But a long-winded answer to say, no, we had experts. But I fundamentally, yes, didn't have
00:22:55
Speaker
any experience in healthcare. The only little experience I have was in banking. I would do some scarce offers, otherwise not. So tell me from a biology perspective, what was the solution?
Understanding Diabetes: Causes and Symptoms
00:23:06
Speaker
What was the problem that you wanted to target? What outcome did you want to deliver? And how did you go about delivering that outcome? We wanted to solve a simple, at some level, can we really help reverse chronic metabolic disorder? And this again, a very long-term problem statement.
00:23:22
Speaker
is because of the rise in chronic conditions in it. What is a chronic metabolic disorder? Yeah, what I define is, you know, any conditions like diabetes, hypertension, or many acesis, the real issue is there's a metabolic disorder. There is some imbalance in your metabolic state, right? It is not, at some level, a real medical condition which requires surgery or anything. And there was enough science, but there is now emerging science that
00:23:48
Speaker
A lot of that has to do with lifestyle habits. A lot of that has to do with excess kind of carbs, insulin resistance, which I'll talk to you about. So a lot of those issues, which basically means it's more than a dieted disorder than anything like being a medical disorder. In the world before, in the 70s, 80s, there were fewer than 10, 20 million people who had diabetes. It was only in the 80s or 90s that this skyrocketed. And you must know that
00:24:15
Speaker
that came in conjunction with the whole high fructose, constant of whole kind of state, then people promoting carbs over fat, fast food, and now it's 450 million people, right? But if it was always chronic disorder, I believe decades ago, it would have been the same, right? So we said, how can we do that? After we do that, after we said that, we said, but let's just tackle one problem, like I said, and we said diabetes. And so when we understood
00:24:44
Speaker
I mean, there's obviously different types of diabetes, but two most common ones are type 1 and type 2. Type 1 affects about 5% to 7% of the Indian population, but most of it is type 2. And type 1 is basically almost like juvenile. You generally get it when you're young. It's when your pancreatic cells, your beta cells in your pancreas are broken or destroyed. So you can't produce any insulin. And as you know, as soon as you eat food,
00:25:14
Speaker
uh kind of uh blood enters into your system and kind of uh you know glucose meant to help transfer this into various organs in the body right uh but if you're type one you are not able to produce any insulin right because uh you are uh basically your beta cells are destroyed and this usually happens
00:25:33
Speaker
very early on so it's called like almost juvenile diabetes so that can't be solved that the only solution is you keep taking external but we learned and we knew that type 2 which affects most people is obviously in many points manageable and reversible for a huge amount of people because in type 2 the real root cause we are trying to solve is insulin resistance
00:25:57
Speaker
which means that there is still your beta cells are still functioning, but they're not functioning to the level. It should because when you're basically excess kind of food gets deposited as fat in your liver, pancreas. So there is excess fat in all of these organs. So what happens is
00:26:16
Speaker
your pancreas produces insulin, it creates this whole kind of system of insulin resistance because it produces insulin, there's excess fat in those organs where insulin doesn't enter. So the reflex mechanism is to produce more insulin, so it's hyperinsulinemia, which creates the whole effect of insulin resistance, right?
00:26:36
Speaker
And that is the real root cause of type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, pre-diabetes and early stage. What are the symptoms of type 2 diabetes? How does it manifest as a disease? Yeah, I think very many symptoms. I think it really depends. But I think the most common ones people see is, I think one is obviously if you go through a test, it's elevated sugar levels, but it's basically you have various symptoms from
00:27:00
Speaker
some fatigue, many people have a significant weight gain. So 70% they say of people who are obese are more disposed to diabetes, obesity, you feel more thirsty, there's frequent urination. You have this real, real mood swings because your energy levels spike due to in response to glucose spikes, so variable. When you eat food, your sugar levels really shoot up, then there's a phase of sudden drop. So you go through this real cycle, right?
00:27:29
Speaker
But many people for years, interestingly, don't know it or ignore it. People don't even realize. They say one in today's six or seven people in India are diabetic, but most are not even aware, right? And we know aware itself is close to 100 million type 2, if you take a three, four-year view. So these are obviously the symptoms, but I don't know if it's you, but pretty much everyone I talk to knows someone in their family or friend or I think who's diabetic or type 2 diabetic. So it's so, so common.
00:27:57
Speaker
But the unfortunate thing is, people in India or world over have thought that if you have type 2 diabetes, it's fine. I live with it. And the first course of treatment that people are given is medication. And generally, it just becomes a case where lifelong, the doctor just tells you to take med... increases the dose, increases the number, eventually as it keeps getting worse, maybe puts you on insulin.
00:28:21
Speaker
And obviously there's so many associated complications with diabetes, but people generally feel that it's fine. I'm diabetic, I'll take medicine, I'll have a suite, then take a medicine. So you're really treating kind of the symptom, but not the cause. And what medicine does is it treats the symptoms there and then. I eat breakfast, I know my sugar level will spike, so let me have a pill. So then at least my sugar spikes are okay. So I don't face this reduction in productivity, energy levels, all of that.
00:28:50
Speaker
But that is never really a long-term solution. And for some reason, I saw something, many people go on to their 70s, 80s, then have a kind of, then they kind of, okay, they're like, I'd rather take medicine and be okay. But I've had cases also in my family, my uncle, who's unfortunately even lost his eyesight due to diabetes, because it can keep getting this work. The moment you have medicine, go to insulin,
00:29:16
Speaker
Eventually, diabetes is probably the leading cause of today's deaths in India. It's the leading cause of kidney disease, retinopathy, pancreatic issues, heart issues. But people, once they get to 70, 80, they say they suffer something. But the real thing leading up to all of this is diabetes. At least to my belief, and I'm not a scientist or medical expert, but I know if you take medicines two, three times a day, it can't be healthy, whatever.
00:29:46
Speaker
How is it detected that you have diabetes? Is it a sugar test? Yeah, the actual test is a sugar test. So the main test people do is a HPA1C, a three-month average sugar level test, which is called a HPA1C. And if you're above 6.5% on that test, your type 2 diabetes. Between 5.7 to 6.4, your pre-diabetes. And you're really disposed. And mostly, I don't know, 70% pre-diabetes become diabetes.
00:30:11
Speaker
And of course, you're on medication. So the goal is that people also take a fasting blood sugar test. So in your fastest state, what are your sugar levels? But the actual probably world over test that everyone sees is the A1C test. So we were saying, how can we really help people who feel that now their life has become, you know, just medication and live this life?
SugarFit's Innovative Approach to Diabetes Reversal
00:30:35
Speaker
How can we help these people to almost have a new lease of life? Because I don't know if you've talked to a lot of diabetic people while they take this medication, they really struggle with energy levels, they really struggle with productivity. People are, I think, at the back of their mind, and while we built this product, we did so much of consumer research, talked to face-to-face to so many people,
00:30:57
Speaker
understand emotionally how do they feel, right? Because that is the real crux of also trying to solve it. So how do they really feel? And we know people are just not happy while they may not feel. We also realize many people just hate talking about it. People just don't want to talk about the fact that they are diabetes because they feel they are stigmatized at some level. So we thought, how can we really, so we tried, how can we help people manage it better? And we know that
00:31:23
Speaker
There's lots of books now, and one of the pioneers in this insulin resistance is James Fungo, and a lot of people who feel that really it's a diabetes disorder.
00:31:33
Speaker
How can we really solve through a combination of technology, human coaching, and data to help people reverse type 2 diabetes and manage it better, which means we want to help people get off medication. We want to help people normalize their sugar levels and go to internal driving purposes to enable people to live a normal life. That's really what we wanted to do because normalcy is underrated. We know with the right kind of elements, if people make the right type 3 choices,
00:32:03
Speaker
right lifestyle choices they can. But it's very easy said and done, just go to a coach. But how do you really understand every human's metabolism is very different than that? Some of the technology is good, right? Understanding how your blood sugar levels spike. You have this real-time continuous glucose monitor and really get people a new lease of life because there are some amazing doctors in India and we work with some of the best ones there, right? But in many cases, and today it's a problem we face is
00:32:32
Speaker
Unfortunately, in the system, there is also a case where obviously some doctors have an incentive to prescribe medicines, have an incentive to prescribe. And consumers don't know much for it. And if a doctor prescribes a medicine in India, I will take it. But we know that for many of this, you don't need medications. You don't. And some of the results, you've seen how fascinating people who are 10, 20 years on insulin off it. So that was kind of the solution we were trying to build.
00:33:02
Speaker
combined as a craft with technology where we can really understand your data, understand your individual metabolic state, what foods work for you and not because each human metabolism is different. Different foods react differently for me or you. And how do we then combine it with the right lifestyle advice and coaching? And at the core of, you know, if today's people ask, what are you really solving for? Obviously, all the technology is sexy and understanding data is great.
00:33:29
Speaker
But the real product we have built is really trying to solve for human motivation and habit formation. Because at some level, people know who are diabetic, what do I need to do? I can easily say stop medicine, do this and that. But we know human adherence to motivation or keeping them engaged or keeping them sticking to a new habit is very tough.
00:33:51
Speaker
So everything else we do, every product we build is to really solve. This was the number one pain point we understood. The number one user gap we wanted to solve is habits and motivation.
00:34:02
Speaker
and around we built the entire ecosystem a solution to just solve for this one thing because if we felt we could get into the minds of a user to get them motivated to what we say and get them stick to what we do, they will see themselves. What is the core solution here? Is it calorie restriction, habit formation towards what end to get people to reduce calorific intake or what is it that that reverses diabetes? I would say it's as simple as calorie restriction because there's also now enough science that suggests that you know
00:34:32
Speaker
I mean, the traditional way in the world has been if you eat less calories and work out more, then you'll burn kind of fat and carbs. But realistically, no, right? Because I think there's still a significant amount of people who are tied to diabetes who actually have perfect BMIs, who for them, they don't need weight loss, right?
00:34:54
Speaker
So for us, it's not a question of calorie restriction. Yes, weight loss is a huge part, given people are obese. Weight loss is a huge part in helping people reverse diabetes. But we know that in Indian context, just calorie restriction won't work. So we are actually trying to solve our real solution basically starts with what we call is a continuous glucose monitor, right? So we use this continuous glucose monitoring technology. This is a patch which is placed at the back of your arm.
00:35:24
Speaker
and it gives you a super level reading every 15 minutes. This is actually the biggest game changer actually I would say in diabetes management because it's actually the first time ever and this is USF Day approved. It came there about a few years ago, but the first time every user has a real insight into how different foods and lifestyle habits impact their blood glucose levels. All this time had data on output. How many steps do I do? What kind of characteristics?
00:35:51
Speaker
But how do I really know what food works for me and not? A rice may work for me, but not for you. A pizza may work for me, not me. That is the gold mine of information. So we start with this technology called CJ, where we really know how does each type of food or lifestyle habit impact that individual and see the real impact on their sugar levels. We then combine this with medical experts. So every plan has a coach and a doctor who are giving personalized coaching for them on one nutrition.
00:36:20
Speaker
on two fitness and three mental health. These are the three cornerstones, right? Because we think precision nutrition is very important, which we do through obviously at the PGM and all of it. We also go very deep on fitness because anything we want to sustainably reverse that, you can always do restricted cards, but we know that will bounce back. How do you get people out of their movement inertia and get working?
00:36:45
Speaker
And the third core element is really to solve for kind of mental health, because there is now signs that most people who are diabetic have very elevated cortisol levels because of stress. So a real solution tackling these three, and all of this is done through the empathetic coaching. So people who understand your data on the backend then give you the right plan for each of these. And how do you make sure people adhere to this on an ongoing basis? And obviously,
00:37:14
Speaker
how the whole coaching happens, how the advice is given to real biometric feedback. We get 1300 data points from CGM. Our program also includes blood testing. So there's someone who goes to your house four times a year to understand your blood parameters. We have full integration. What is that CGM? It's a continuous glucose monitor, that technology. Yeah. So that technology, we have people who go to get all your tests at home four times a year. We know all your fitness data. How are you working out?
00:37:43
Speaker
At the back end, our technology is working to understand each and every bit of a parameter. We will be able to predict, for instance, how will your heart rate be going for? Because there is now, using your HRV data, using your STEM data, you can also almost non-invasively predict your sugar levels. So we'll be able to know when is the next kind of time coming for this guy where he'll feel like he needs to have something. So it is slightly restriction in something very small part of it. It is actually a very, we think,
00:38:11
Speaker
To really solve it, you need a full stack solution to solve it sustainably. Now, if you want results in one or two months and we have no program for one or two months, you can always for a small number of people go on a crazy diet, a keto diet. So one of our core building philosophy is not to do any drastic diets, not to do any fad diets. So no one in our program is actually a very precision treatment for each individual.
00:38:34
Speaker
The way to reverse diabetes is getting rid of fat in the body, or is it more complex than that? I hope it was that simple. There's actually also two types of fat, sub-contatious fat and visceral fat. What you really need to get out is visceral fat, right, which is the excess fat. And what is the difference between these two? Yeah, the visceral fat is all the fat deposit. Like sub-contatious fat, you can also see it on the outside. Sometimes, aesthetically, we feel it's bad for us, but it's actually not harmful fat.
00:39:03
Speaker
The real harmful fat for you is your fat in your pancreas, in your liver, that excess fat deposits, which is making sure that insulin is not working because the insulin is not able to penetrate, move the glucose in the blood, move the glucose from the blood to the different cells of organs in the body, right? That is the core issue to solve. How do you remove that excess fat over there?
00:39:29
Speaker
for people who also don't have that access. The human body is complex but at some level is very simple. If you are to ask me what is the simplistic solution a layman can do is try and E2L and this I think for a general health. E2L kind of work out.
00:39:45
Speaker
and kind of get your mental health in mind. But if it was that simple, it would be great. But how do you really push people to do it? And how do you understand their body so they realize it? But in a nutshell, it's to get rid of visceral fat in your organ. What does the diet plan get to us? Is it high protein, low carbs, or what? In fact, we don't have a specific thing. And that's actually, I would say, the level of personalization we go to.
00:40:09
Speaker
I would say we don't have anything. We don't do any keto diet. We don't say high-protein low-fat. What we believe in is carb-controlled, portion-appropriated meals. That's, I would say, our guiding philosophy. Our philosophy is 80, 90% of whatever someone eats at home, they should. Because if we give them any drastic diet, we know they'll follow it for one or two weeks, or one or two months, and then they'll drop back. So we say that what we tell people is,
00:40:37
Speaker
things around what to eat. So we may just replace Maida with to eat because we know exactly how does it work for the body. We'll tell you when to eat. So with the CGN data, we know, for instance, some people who eat on nine or 10, it impacts their sugar level much worse off than at seven. So we won't tell them stop, right? So eat cauliflower, right? We'll tell this. Or how much to eat, we'll then portion appropriate rather than four chapatis. We'll start with three. But all of this is by making small habit changes. That's what I was saying earlier.
00:41:05
Speaker
They are very, very, you won't notice every day a user is given one or two interventions.
00:41:10
Speaker
do this many steps. And some of it may seem very simple, but we are really solving for the habit loop. And, you know, like this atomic habit, but really solving for small habit change, because once these come, you'll easily follow it, right, and sustainably move it. How do you build habits in people? Did that book, Atomic Habits, give you some guidelines to follow? I'm a big believer in that book. In fact, we talked to a lot of people in atomic habits, you know, tiny habits,
00:41:39
Speaker
There's various, obviously, books we read, Atomic Habits, something we do a lot of inspiration from. But, you know, in human reality, it's the right, right? Everyone of us has this various cue craving kind of responses. So what we are trying to solve with habits is how do we get people to get rid of many bad habits and make small, incremental good habits? So we don't want people to, which again goes to our philosophy, do drastic diet changes, do anything drastic, but that would help.
00:42:07
Speaker
And our program, when people buy the Type 2 plan, it's only one program. You buy a 12-month plan. Because most people and how it's broken down to is the first three or four weeks, we just understand your body. We get all the data. We know how your sugar levels spike at night. We get all your testing data. Then the next three months is focused a lot on bringing down your sugar levels, controlling the cold. A lot of people see big changes in their sugar levels. But most people who have diabetes have other comorbid conditions.
00:42:37
Speaker
So the next three to four months is to solve the long-term issues on those other core metabolic issues, right? And then eventually get people to learn what they want to do. But how habits are done, it's a bit tough to explain, but if you actually see when someone buys the plan, they actually get a platform, a mobile app, you can't download it if you're not a user. But just the way what we've done is try to take inspiration from atomic habits, but bring it in a presentable right way to the user.
00:43:05
Speaker
Obviously, we get all this data, so a user knows we know what was happening. Someone who's not read atomic habits, can you tell me what is the guiding philosophy of habit building? The guiding philosophy is just small habit changes and do it over a longer period of time. So we would actually, once we analyze the user and we see that, say we know this user in five months to reverse diabetes needs to start walking 10,000 steps. We know that if he's doing zero or 500 steps, there's no way it's happening immediately.
00:43:34
Speaker
I think previously if you go to a trainer, they would say start getting on immediately. But we know that something sustainable will start in the first week, just think do a thousand steps a day and do it after this, do thousand steps, then slowly, incrementally increase it. I know it sounds very simple, but how we kind of show him how his streaks happen, how is he seeing progress? Because with all of these habits, people also need to see results. If they don't see results, they'll drop off.
00:43:59
Speaker
So they'll see as they start doing 1000 steps, as they start adding some elements before, I mean, they'll actually see weight reduction and various other changes, right? Because throughout the program, we also have them measure the level. So every week we try and get one, you know, physical, clinical, mental, or social change, right? For them, they can be very other small habits, right? We won't, like through the CGM data, there's very interesting data.
00:44:25
Speaker
If you have a pizza or a beer, your sugar level spikes very immediately. But we actually tell people have some high nutrient food like walnuts or almonds before it, and it reduces. One of the core advice we give, for instance, is we tell people, again, this will be very personalized. But after a meal, for most diabetics, their sugar levels spike. So doing 15, 20, 30 minute walk right after. And today, 70, 80% of our users do it. They see no sugar spikes.
00:44:54
Speaker
And the real thing about habit is, at least this is the rule of thumb, you do something for 21 days, it automatically becomes a habit, right? Because today we wake up, we know we have to go to brush. Now, how do I make sure that we tell these guys associate a habit with what you're doing? So we know that similarly you wake up, you say, I have to have a brush. So we tell people you've had food. Now you really need to have a walk.
00:45:16
Speaker
Like those are kind of the connections we'll form with habits. And that's obviously what atomic habits also comes to. But those are really the habits trying to be formed. So you're saying build connections and slow incremental changes. These are like the two. Because it's very simple, right? Yeah. Because you have, all of us will have your cue, right? When they say cue craving. So your cue, for instance, what atomic habit is saying is, for instance, your cue is, I wake
Lifestyle Flexibility and Technology Integration
00:45:43
Speaker
up. So you know, the next thing you do is brush. You associate one event with the next.
00:45:46
Speaker
Now, how can we associate those events? And again, it's good habits. It can't be bad habits. So if I associate now eating and post eating lunch, I associate it with a walk. It almost becomes a dead tone for me that now for the next few months, I will do it. I will pick a place where I can eat food and do it, but it's not easy, right? It's not easy in practice. So how do you bring it alive on a platform for you? So how do you make the coach encourage you to do it? How do they also see results within? So it almost becomes,
00:46:15
Speaker
deadpan for them, right? So we want to bring those interconnections and that's a huge element of it.
00:46:21
Speaker
We also don't want to stop people because in an Indian context, there are so many festivals. We don't want people to go on a Diwali and stop sweets. We know it won't. But we want them to say, when is the right time you can eat it? And say, you've done these things today, you need rewards. That's part of the habit group. You need seed days, you need rewards. So we also make certain reward days for users, right, when they still won't see results. So that's how we are trying to really kind of solve this issue.
00:46:48
Speaker
How do you I mean, you know, so like you're saying that it is highly customized for each person, the diet recommendation will vary. It's a very knowledge heavy kind of a thing. And how do you institutionalize that knowledge base? I mean, this this sounds like you would need a very, very massive library of knowledge where you could
00:47:12
Speaker
And you also need some sort of a way for the software to suggest to a coach that, okay, this is what you should recommend. So how do you get this knowledge-based institutionalized? And I'm sure this is like a continuous process and probably it's still happening, but tell me about that. Yeah, it's absolutely a continuous process, but I think we've had some benefit at some level, you know, most of us built or
00:47:34
Speaker
As I told you earlier, you know, it could have very good already existing information or, you know, a whole IP or technology we've built with care, right? But realistically, you know, actually what people or consumers see is kind of the coach and the plan, but that is actually the beauty of the technology we've built kind of all the AI on the back end, which is analyzing each and every data point. So with the CGM device, the continuous data monitor, we get glucose monitor, we get 1300 data points over a period of 14 days.
00:48:02
Speaker
There is zero intervention today from a quarter user. We actually have predictive food scores. Obviously, this is the whole data science engine we've built or team we've built. And that data is today we are able to correlate each and every type of macronutrient or food and how will that impact it for that user.
00:48:22
Speaker
that for us is actually at some level the easier part because you know it enables us to scale because it's as you get data points and we'll keep improving. These data points will essentially help you tell the patient what not to eat right because if you see that whenever people eat a certain type of food the sugar level spikes up so then your system will tell you okay these are like red flag foods so to say.
00:48:45
Speaker
Yeah, and not only that, right? And tomorrow we'll know that because of our database of one lakh or so foods, tomorrow, if we know that their pizza has very similar nutrient content or pasta, the system will flag that given the macro and micronutrients for that food, this will definitely impact your sugar levels the same way, right? But that is so obviously this huge amount of data science we're doing, we're like churning lots of data, which is very important. But to your point,
00:49:12
Speaker
Um, today we have a lot of also the whole kind of meal temperature, and how do you know, really suggest the right things accurately for the user. So that is the element of deep tech, right? I mean, so on the outside, it may seem like there's a coach and there's some users, but the real, I think, secret sauce in this is how do you combine all of that data and analytics?
00:49:33
Speaker
How do you present it to a code? How do you present it to a user? How do you provide outcome? On the back end, there are tons of processes going on for us to understand every user. But that is all done today internally.
00:49:46
Speaker
But say stuff like giving a diet plan and giving an exercise plan and telling them what, you know, so giving those kind of recommendations. Is that information institutionalized that you just need a high empathy person to come in and the system will tell him, okay, this is what you should recommend? Or do you need people with domain expertise to come in and be coaches? As of now, where are you at?
00:50:14
Speaker
No, I would say it's a mix. I think now you also need domain. I mean, we'll always have domain expertise because we think
00:50:20
Speaker
say also for a user, they need to have, one is not only suggesting, but who can answer the questions, be with them throughout, right? But we eventually also want to make the life of that coach easier, right? Because at some level, even today for a doctor, it's very easy, right? Because most of the doctors at some level, if you see in India, we will prescribe the same 20 medicines for a fever or this type. So it's quite easy to templatize that once you understand. So similarly, right, depending on the user, their parameters, for fitness is actually extremely easy. And we have a proprietary algorithm for that.
00:50:50
Speaker
So I think it's a mix where we do obviously provide the right suggestions for the coach. But true personalization or empathy also comes with the coach being there and being able to override and do certain things. Do your coaches need to be domain experts in diet and fitness or do they need to be domain experts in habit building in the sense that what is the focus of the coach? Yeah, I think the core focus today is diet and nutrition or I would say fitness everything.
00:51:18
Speaker
Every one of our course goes through, we have actually this really comprehensive training program, right? See, there is no real, I think habit building is an element of two things. In fact, all of our coaches are not only upscaled on diet nutrition, but very deeply actually on mental health. Mental health is one of the core things people are done because habit building, fitness, all of it, I mean, the mind of a diabetic is very different. So they're also very upscaled on mental health, what to do, how to handle the situation.
00:51:46
Speaker
domain expertise helps in diet because a core aspect obviously of this is the food you eat but after that that's probably only 50% after that is how do you interact but for each of them no coach will just come through the system without that training.
00:52:01
Speaker
And we will keep evolving it. We may have a mix tomorrow of people where we'll be able to bucket which users need more of diet, which users need more of fitness. So that will be an ever-evolving process. Today, most are nutritional. And what is the training they go through? Is it your own course? All in-house. We're full stack vertically integrated. See, for us, we think
00:52:22
Speaker
Just consumer experience, outcomes, all of that is really important. So I think training is kind of done. I guess the real path to scale would probably be being at a position where anybody can become a coach once they undergo the training. I mean, you don't need people who
00:52:40
Speaker
have too much of subject knowledge, but you probably need people who have empathy, you hire for empathy and the rest of it, the system takes care of it, you know, in the sense that giving recommendations and what are red flag items or what are good to eat items and all of that happens through the system. And probably they do still need to know the language and hence they undergo training, but the only thing they need coming in is empathy.
00:53:04
Speaker
I think it makes, yes, Akshay, at some level, I think our product is still dealing with, you still need domain expertise. And see, path to scale, I don't see any issues. Fortunately, in India, thousands of people have done the MSC nutrition, a few 15, the double digit thousands have done BSC. Because why I'm saying empathy alone won't be enough is
00:53:27
Speaker
it is at some level a medical disorder too, right? So these coaches will also need diabetes experts also need to know diabetes specific medications. You don't know how we can use the escalates, the dosage, the hypoglycemic event still requires that, right? So it, it wouldn't be as easy for us to get a fresh air was well spoken to really do it. But scale and getting coaches will not be an issue. But obviously, how do you protocolize everything? How do you make sure it's
00:53:56
Speaker
just so seamless for a user and I hope that's what we've cracked and that's in our DNA right to build. But you will still need fair amount of good domain expertise. But also with every every every planner user gets there's also a doctor to help manage it. But we want to make sure also coaches are equipped to handle those situations. So tell me about the customer journey like when a customer like starting from where a lead is generated. Say somebody fills up a form on your website. So what's the journey?
00:54:25
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, a customer generally today, once they form a lead or they buy a plan, right? Many buy either directly. Is it a personalized sales process or is it pure online checkout? You can buy directly from the website or you can kind of have someone assist you in the sales. But once you buy, you just basically download our app and the whole process starts actually as soon as
00:54:52
Speaker
Because pre-purchase, you already put in your address and everything. And once you buy, you actually have this really cool smart kit that gets delivered to your house in a couple of days, which includes all the integrated devices. You get a continuous glucose monitor, and then you get glucometer strips and lances. And it's all packaged in a sugar-fit box. What about fitness trackers? What we do is we integrate with fitness trackers. So we have all that data. And we see that most of our users today have that data where they
00:55:21
Speaker
or fitness devices or Google fit, Apple fit. And most don't want additional extra and it's no money type. What is the pricing? So I think, yeah, on average, I see people generally for a year, it's anywhere from about 25,000 to 30,000 a year, roughly, is the price. And is it paid lump sum or like installments or what? Generally lump sum, generally upfront lump sum. And it includes all of this. So first you welcome kit and device gets delivered.
00:55:49
Speaker
You then get this ongoing call from a health coach, right, who welcomes you to the program, talks about the program, what to expect. Then you can actually, on the platform, book your diagnostic test. You just schedule what time you want to, what date and time. After the bottom comes to your house, take the comprehensive blood and urine test.
00:56:07
Speaker
After that, then you basically have your, the same phlebotomist also installs your CGM device, you know?
Onboarding and Continuous Guidance at SugarFit
00:56:13
Speaker
So there's also someone who will come install it and activate it. Install it as in, do you remove it when you're sleeping? No, no, it's 24 hours up to 14 days. You can shower with it, you can play with it, you can do whatever you want. And it's a USMDA approved, right? So it's no issue.
00:56:30
Speaker
So it's almost like a band-aid strip, something like that, like obviously bigger in size, but something like that. It's just a coin-shaped device actually, so not even that big. Literally, I think a one would be fine. And the contact is with the skin only, like there's no... Yeah, yeah. How is it measuring sugar without drawing blood? It picks interstitial fluid. So interstitial fluid doesn't mean you need to go and pick the blood like of a glucometer.
00:56:56
Speaker
But that itself gives you kind of blood glucose value. The 14 days you're saying that's like the battery life, like after 14 days it needs to be charged. Yeah, that's the device life actually, yeah. And with 14 days we have just enough readings for us to correlate and do everything we want to. Sorry, 14 days is battery life or device life? No, no, device life. There's no battery, it's just one device. It gets installed and the life of the device is for us exactly.
00:57:24
Speaker
Obviously, people later, if they want to avail, they can avail. But I mean, we have all the data we need to kind of correlate, do everything we want for you. So that one 14-day reading is enough for you to then do the personalization. Exactly. Because we know 80-90% of what you eat, how your trends are, how your macromicro nutrients react, exercise.
00:57:48
Speaker
So, and then obviously, like I said, the person comes, takes all your tests. Then within 24 hours or so, your lab reports come. They come to you and then you just need to schedule a call with the doctor and the doctor basically understands your history and then understands kind of all your lab reports.
00:58:05
Speaker
And then basically now on a daily basis, the coach is monitoring you. Obviously the CTM is installed. So we are getting all the real time data. We are seeing how, how is your sugar level moving at night in the morning? Some super cool insights, right? We noticed many people who are taking night medication don't need it because they should have never tried. So.
00:58:25
Speaker
On this 14 days, obviously the coach is talking to you, understanding your data, seeing your daily spikes when you go to hypo-hyper because those are the worst episodes for a person who's diabetes, right? Hypoglycemia is where your sugar levels just drastically drop and that can be at some level quite catastrophic. You can faint or you can kind of breathe. So you have a real drop.
00:58:47
Speaker
So when it goes very high, when it spikes very high in the two, three hundreds, many people actually suffer from hypo. And what happens in case of hyper? Like hypo, you can get a blackout. And in case of hyper? Hypo the same, right? It's just elevated sugar levels. So you can start feeling dizzy. You can start feeling all sorts of jitteriness. But with all of this, then we realize that we understand your data. So all this is coming. The coach is guiding you throughout the time.
00:59:16
Speaker
to see what's working, what's not. And then in this 14 days is when then also the plant patients are, every day they're giving you weekly plants. They're giving you weekly nutrition plants, fitness plants. They know what you like, what you don't like. So they're titrating various things along that, right? And we not only provide, you know, the entire plant, right?
00:59:37
Speaker
We actually provide you, for instance, Akshay, even if it's fitness and no, I think other platform does it. We also provide you the right content for fitness and stuff. So it won't be, they'll do strength and conditioning. We actually provide you the right content that you just need to do. Okay. So like a video that you can watch. Video, that's cool. And it can be live or DIY and all of it is tracked, right? We have this thing where we can track your calories and everything. So all of that is given now updated on a weekly basis and daily.
01:00:03
Speaker
The coach and user can just interact also on WhatsApp. We've done a very deep integration. They don't even need to do so because people are coming there anytime. They can fill in the intervention there. They can log their meals, various things they can do. So all the data entry can happen through WhatsApp? Yeah, all of it can happen through WhatsApp. Do people like click a photo of what they're eating and upload it on there? And then you have like a machine learning, a vision learning thing, which kind of guesstimates what is the calorie count.
01:00:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think in some level, it's quite accurate nowadays. And people can also leave on their notes, whatever they want. And then after this, obviously, all the small habits and interventions are given. That's also tracked, and you can be able to see your progress with the gamification that's done as well. There's a whole also obviously for people, community, you know, to understand how people are doing as well.
01:00:58
Speaker
So this ongoing and again, obviously for various people, it may differ right when the week happens. Then after this, obviously during this period to again measure your normal sugar levels, the coach may, we give you a glucoma test trip. Whenever that needs to be happening, you can periodic doctor consults are happening. All the content is going. And then also every three months you have your whole blood test again, right? To see what is your progress, how are you doing? And then also to solve for
01:01:28
Speaker
Yeah, so every three months you have this HB1C and SCSS to see what's your progress. During this time is when, along this journey, hopefully for many people in three to six months, they either off medication or significantly reduced, either off insulin or significantly reduced insulin, right? So this is where they see a lot of solution. Even after the 14-day CGN, the doctor will be there to guide the user, to tell them what went wrong, what went right. So all of that is there.
01:01:57
Speaker
Obviously, all the data we're getting there through all your fitness devices, like we have all these parameters which are throwing up the right insights, what you need to do, what you should do. If you like the Found a Thesis podcast, then do check out our other shows on subjects like marketing, technology, career advice, books, and drama.
Host's Podcasting Journey and Final Thoughts
01:02:17
Speaker
Visit the podium.in, that is, t-h-e-p-o-d-i-u-m.in for a complete list of all our shows.
01:02:31
Speaker
Before we end the episode, I want to share a bit about my journey as a podcaster. I started podcasting in 2020 and in the last two years, I've had the opportunity to interview more than 250 founders who are shaping India's future across sectors.
01:02:47
Speaker
If you also want to speak to the best minds in your field and build an enviable network, then you must consider becoming a podcaster. And the first step to becoming a podcaster starts with Zencaster, which takes care of all the nuts and bolts of podcasting, from remote recording to editing to distribution and finally monetization.
01:03:08
Speaker
If you are planning to check out the platform, then please show your support for the founder thesis podcast by using this link zen.ai founder thesis. That's zen.ai founder thesis.