Pushed by a wave of health-conscious millennials and households more healthy meals decisions, India has witnessed a sea shift in client preferences in the previous few years, particularly after the pandemic.
A 2022 thought paper by Avendus Capital forecasts India’s well being meals market to achieve $30 Bn within the subsequent 5 years, rising at a 20% CAGR —1.5X the expansion fee of India’s general packaged meals and beverage market. Notably, hundreds of manufacturers have mushroomed within the health and wellness section prior to now few years to money in on this chance.
Regardless of this, India is residence to at least one in ten of the world’s overweight kids, as packaged and ultra-processed meals proceed to be consumed extensively with little consideration for his or her dietary worth or stage of processing. To not point out, this has contributed to the rise of life-style ailments, corresponding to diabetes and hypertension, amongst Indians.
For the founding father of TruthIn Ravi Teja Putrevu, who went by way of a tumor-removal surgical procedure in 2022 after being identified with acromegaly, a uncommon pituitary situation, this resonated deeply.
“Earlier than my analysis, I had been consuming a whole lot of packaged meals, trusting the advertising and marketing claims on the labels. Nonetheless, after being identified and studying I used to be at a excessive threat of diabetes and coronary heart illness, I made a sudden shift in my life-style. As I started studying labels extra intently, I realised that the truth usually didn’t match what was printed on the packaging,” the founder stated.
The realisation additionally made him see a chance on this space. He considered an app that would assist folks decide the dietary worth of meals gadgets. To pursue this, he joined forces together with his cousin Raghav and Dr Aman Basheer Sheikh (an in depth buddy) to include NatFirst in 2022.
Based in July 2023, NatFirst’s key product is an app, TruthIn, which gives detailed insights into packaged meals, private care, and beauty merchandise.
The app leverages AI, together with its proprietary TruthIn Score System, to decode diet by analysing substances, enabling shoppers to make more healthy and knowledgeable consuming decisions.
With a easy scan, customers can entry complete product knowledge, together with well being scores and personalised insights, serving to them navigate advanced labels and keep away from ultra-processed meals. Backed by medical doctors, nutritionists, and tech engineers, TruthIn operates on the intersection of AI, AR, and knowledge analytics to ship worth to its rising consumer base. The app has garnered 5 Lakh downloads since its inception. It at present hosts 85K+ month-to-month customers.
TruthIn’s Early Days
Earlier than beginning his enterprise, Putrevu was a arithmetic and physics instructor. He additionally has expertise working with a few startups.
Whereas NatFirst is the byproduct of Putrevu’s awakening, the startup solely got here into being due to the assist from different cofounders.
Notably, given his robust medical background, Sheikh instantly resonated with Putrevu’s trigger. However, what excited Raghav about this challenge was the tech half. To assist shoppers make higher dietary decisions, the trio included Natfirst and began engaged on their core product TruthIn.
“Nonetheless, creating TruthIn’s tech proved extra advanced than we initially thought,” stated the founder.
Earlier than formally launching the app, the founders got here throughout many key learnings through the analysis. Initially, the founder’s focus was on gathering knowledge from the web and placing it on the app. Nonetheless, quickly they realised that on-line knowledge is commonly unreliable.
To deal with this, they collected knowledge from a number of sources like Swiggy, Amazon, BigBasket, and Blinkit. “After we in contrast the knowledge accessible on-line to what was printed on the packaging, we discovered vital discrepancies. In consequence, we took the tough route and began sending photographers to supermarkets to seize pictures and course of them,” the founders stated.
Now, the following step was to offer shoppers with personalised each day allowance (PDA) values based mostly on elements like age, gender, and well being circumstances. Nonetheless, calculating this for every mixture was a posh course of and required vital involvement from medical doctors.
This was after they determined to maintain issues easy, making a ranking system that would assist shoppers resolve whether or not a product was appropriate for them or not.
To make their ranking system stand out, the founders studied what different nations had been doing. Subsequently, they seemed on the Well being Star Score System in Australia and Nutri-Rating in France however discovered that these didn’t account for the standard of substances. Therefore, the founders determined to select the very best components of those programs and add a give attention to ingredient high quality.
With this, they formally launched the B2C app TruthIn in July 2023. Initially, the founders stored the app free to collect consumer suggestions.
“Initially, we wished to contemplate an inexpensive annual subscription mannequin. Nonetheless, we realised that was not the fitting means ahead, so began with a free mannequin solely,” the founders stated.
Refining The TruthIn Tech Stack
The app’s first model featured a easy barcode scan that allowed customers to entry complete product knowledge, together with well being scores. This scan additionally helped customers decipher advanced labels to make knowledgeable decisions. Nonetheless, a lot had but to be executed.
The founders are nonetheless within the means of refining the mannequin. They’re sharply focussed on perfecting the worth proposition to make sure that customers discover clear advantages every time they open the app.
To this point, their largest problem has been managing knowledge. Furthermore, they’ve already tried a number of iterations to refine their knowledge stack and consumer interface to get an ideal app.
“Initially, we constructed the app utilizing React and launched an MVP model, nevertheless it wasn’t scalable on iOS and Android. So, we determined to transition to Flutter to make sure compatibility throughout each platforms,” Raghav stated, elaborating on the iterations.
He added that after they began, instruments like OpenAI and generative AI weren’t as superior as they’re immediately. The founders stated they needed to depend on primary machine studying algorithms to collect product knowledge, examine high quality, and course of substances and vitamins.
“Nonetheless, scaling this course of to deal with 1 Lakh+ merchandise required extra than simply Excel sheets,” he added.
To handle this, the founders developed a backend system, the Knowledge Discovery Platform (DDP), which additionally totally automates the method.
“The whole course of begins when a picture, sourced from a consumer or different sources, enters the platform, the place it’s processed and knowledge is extracted. A handbook high quality examine follows, with any crucial corrections made. Subsequent, an information science engine analyses the info to derive insights. Then nutritionists evaluate the outcomes, verifying attributes like gluten-free standing, synthetic substances, and pure sources. As soon as totally quality-checked, the product knowledge is uploaded to TruthIn,” the founders stated, including that DDP took a number of iterations to totally automate and streamline as a backend platform.
Initially, handbook checks, primary Optical Character Recognition (OCR) instruments, and a restricted knowledge science engine resulted in decrease accuracy and sluggish processing instances, making it difficult to push merchandise rapidly to the app. Now, with superior instruments in place, every product might be processed in round 15-20 minutes.
At the moment, TruthIn permits customers to scan barcodes on packaged meals, private care, and beauty merchandise to immediately perceive ingredient particulars, dietary profiles, and the way these apply to their private well being wants. Every product is rated based mostly on elements like saturated fat or sugar content material, giving customers a right away evaluation to assist them make knowledgeable decisions.
The startup can be wanting so as to add personalisation to the app corresponding to serving measurement suggestions. It will make it simpler for customers to make health-conscious selections based mostly on their distinctive wants.
TruthIn’s Manner Ahead
Whereas the startup’s focus to this point has been on creating and refining the TruthIn app for shoppers, it now plans to give attention to the B2B section.
“TruthIn operates on a tech stack that additionally helps B2B purposes, notably in compliance. As an illustration, FSSAI rules require ecommerce listings for packaged meals or private care merchandise to show substances, dietary data, allergen knowledge, and related particulars. That is the place NatFirst with its TruthIn Score System can provide B2B options to firms to enhance their compliance,” the founders stated.
Through the use of its ingredient and diet evaluation, the corporate goals to classify merchandise with over 50 attributes corresponding to gluten-free, dairy-free, or lactose-containing — offering life-style and health-based tags. Notably, these attributes assist ecommerce platforms provide correct search filters.
The startup is already in talks with Amazon and goals to combine with Blinkit, Swiggy, and different fast commerce platforms going ahead.
The founders have additionally utilized for patents on the TruthIn Score System.
“Our purpose is to open supply the algorithm and work collaboratively with all related stakeholders, together with the Nationwide Institute of Diet and FSSAI, to make the ranking system as clear and credible as potential,” the founders stated.
The corporate can be actively reaching out to FSSAI to collaborate in both refining the TruthIn Score System or supporting the event of an FSSAI-endorsed Indian ranking system designed by diet consultants.
In line with the founders, the TruthIn Score System stays central to NatFirst’s mission, and the B2B section features as a income stream constructed on the foundational TruthIn tech stack, permitting the startup to serve B2B API wants with minimal extra growth.
All in all, with practically 5 Lakh+ downloads, the startup has seen regular progress to this point. Nonetheless, the journey forward stays difficult. In line with the founder, they’ve but to achieve a significant breakthrough and are nonetheless at a pre-revenue stage.
Transferring ahead, the startup goals to strengthen its advertising and marketing efforts, sharpen its worth proposition, and fine-tune its pricing, monetisation, and consumer expertise.
As of now, the startup is focussed on empowering Indian shoppers to make more healthy decisions. Now, because it ventures into the B2B section and seeks collaborations with trade regulators, it appears well-poised to make a significant affect with TruthIn on India’s well being meals and wellness panorama. Nonetheless, attaining scalability and monetary sustainability will probably be vital for its long-term success.
[Edited By Shishir Parasher]