'Our Ambition Is To Reach Up To 1.6 Million People By 2018'

healthi, a fast growing digital preventive health startup has grown 9x in the first two years of its operations. Rekuram Varadharaj, Co-Founder and COO, healthi talks about the company’s vison, its business model, various initiatives, tie ups with Government of India and more, in an interaction with Prathiba Raju

- Prathiba Raju

How did the concept of healthi evolve?

I used to opt for preventive health checkups as a personal choice but I realised that the results were not that clear. Similarly, another person from Stanford (US), after his annual health checkup was unable to completely understand, how to correlate the test results with his health status. All these tests gave gave common solutions like diet and exercise but there was no complete, individual, analysis. We wanted to make a module to come out with easyto-understand reports, so that one can easily seek expert help and guidance from specialists after understanding their health status. Our main focus was to demystify health and make it simple. At the same time, we wanted to answer three simple questions – 'How healthy am 1?' 'What do I need to continue or change in order to stay or get healthy?' 'Who can help?'. So, this was the genesis of healthi which started its operations in May 2014.

Before we started off, for almost a year we had to work on predictive analysis. Our team consists of data scientist, bio statistician and population health experts. They can understand health data and come up with scientifically valid models which can predict chronic disease. healthi offers a personalised health check package which is tailor-made for individuals based on their unique needs from millions of potential options. In partnership with leading healthcare brands, we deliver these programmes across the country. Right now, we are present in 130 countries and 600-plus locations across the country.

What efforts did you put in to promote disease prevention and wellness?