Fitgalaxy - Preventive Health & Fitness

There has been a rapid increase in the number of people who are overweight or obese with a simultaneous increase in lifestyle diseases such as PCOD / PCOS, thyroid, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure issues. 

This increase is mainly driven by modern lifestyles comprising of packaged / processed food heavily focused only on macronutrient ratios, a shift away from traditional foods and methods of preparation, sedentary and indoor lifestyles, disruption of sleep / sunlight cycles and stress. 

This has lead to extremely poor yet avoidable health outcomes, massive and inefficient spending on tertiary healthcare for chronic conditions which can be prevented and reversed by lifestyle changes, and increased vulnerability to pandemics at a population scale. 

Fitgalaxy helps people achieve sustainable health and fitness, and prevent & reverse all lifestyle diseases at scale with guidance over Fitgalaxy Android app (our flagship product), IOS app and website! 

We focus on key aspects of a traditional lifestyle backed by modern science required to be fit and healthy naturally - Nutrition, Exercise, Sleep, Sunlight and Motivation. 

We deliver step by step guidance and hand hold people to become fit and healthy through a combination of technology and health coaches (Nutritionists, Fitness and Yoga coaches) on our platform.

Our goal is to scale Fitgalaxy up globally - preventing and reversing obesity and lifestyle diseases at a population scale. This would also boost immunity and resilience to pandemics, reduce reliance on medicines for chronic lifestyle diseases which are best tackled by changing our lifestyle, reduce health burden and strengthen the healthcare system.

The problem we are solving is the alarming population level surge in overweight and obese persons, with a concomitant increase in lifestyle diseases. Pre-industrialisation, obesity and lifestyle diseases were negligible. Worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. Globally, 39% adults (above 18 years) were overweight in 2016, 13% were obese, and there’s a serious surge in prevalence of diabetes, PCOD / PCOS, thyroid, cholesterol / blood pressure issues across age groups (even among young children). 

In India, 19% women and 21% men are overweight or obese, over 75 million people are diabetic (~7% of India’s population) and 15-20% women of child bearing age have PCOS which causes infertility among other issues. 

Obesity and lifestyle diseases raise vulnerability, lower immunity and lead to poor health outcomes in the event of a pandemic. 

This health crisis is due to health-corroding elements of a modern lifestyle - where consumption of packaged / processed food, sedentary work, staying indoors and not outdoors with minimal sunlight exposure, disruption in sleep timings and quality, and being stressed is the norm and not the exception!

Our mission with Fitgalaxy is to help people become fit and healthy naturally at population scale in the most effective and cost efficient way. 

Fitgalaxy helps people achieve sustainable health and fitness. We have been able to help people lose fat, achieve their ideal body weight and BMI, achieve a high level of fitness and prevent and in many cases completely reverse lifestyle diseases including PCOD / PCOS, thyroid, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure issues - with adherence to a natural and traditional lifestyle! Our guidance is delivered at scale with a combination of technology and health coaches over our apps and website!

We do this by guiding people on key areas of a traditional lifestyle which are required to be fit and healthy naturally - Nutrition, Exercise, Sleep, Sunlight and Motivation

1) Traditional Nutrition (whole foods that are natural and prepared in a traditional manner and not processed / packaged foods made in a laboratory or factory) 

2) Regular Exercise - bodyweight, freeweight / HIIT / strength / endurance exercises, walking / running, playing a sport etc - which can be done at anywhere with no requirement of gyms or machines. 

3) High Quality & Adequate Sleep with focus on minimising screen time and bright artificial lights before sleeping, eating dinner atleast 2-3 hours before sleeping, sleeping early before 10 pm and for atleast 8 hours, sleeping in complete darkness and waking up naturally without an alarm

4) Being outdoors and not cooped up indoors with a minimum of 1 hour of Sunlight exposure while wearing cotton / natural fibre clothes (no sunscreens or polyester clothes)

5) Being motivated to achieve our goals and not stressed out!

On our apps and website, we have plans for different health and fitness goals - fat loss, muscle building, preventing / reversing lifestyle diseases including PCOD / PCOS, thyroid, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure issues, pregnant women and growing children. 

In our plans, users get customised guidance by their personal Nutritionist and Fitness Coach (2 coaches) to achieve sustainable health and fitness. 

We have created a large database of traditional Indian food items for each state of India with their nutrition information. We have also shot over 350 HD exercise videos based on exercises that can be done anywhere. 

Our coaches use these databases and our technology to create customised nutrition, exercise and lifestyle plans for users. Coaches guide users step by step over unlimited chat in the app and whatsapp, and with weekly phone calls. 

We also have live online and interactive workouts everyday across a variety of workouts - Yoga, HIIT, Strength and Conditioning, Endurance, Mobility. In these workouts, users are guided in an interactive way where coaches guide them on how to do each exercise properly. 

We also have a full fledged social media platform on our android app where users and coaches have their own profiles, create posts, ask questions, and get guidance and motivation by coaches and the whole Fitgalaxy community. 

We have also created 'Learn' modules where users are taken through a series of selected posts step by step to give them a complete understanding of how to get fit and healthy naturally!

We are currently working on and will soon release Fitgalaxy's AI chatbot which will answer all users' questions on health and fitness. Further, we also want to make the guidance voice based and respond in multiple languages in India and the world. 

The problem of being overweight, obese or having one or multiple chronic lifestyle disease and managing it by having medicines is unfortunately now the norm across India and in many parts of the world. 

Fitgalaxy has been able to help people across various demographic and economic conditions with different health conditions in India become sustainably fit and healthy:

1) Young children who end up routinely eating junk food / cakes / cookies / market based chocolates / commercial bread jam etc. Kids are also now staying indoors much more with late sleep timings. We are now seeing young kids being overweight and having diabetes or hormonal issues. 

2) Office going / corporate people especially in tier 1 and tier 2 cities - who have sedentary lifestyles and poor food habits (ordering takeaways, eating at restaurants which cook food in refined oil with processed ingredients, eating processed foods such as commercial bread, biscuits, juices etc routinely). Majority of this segment is above the normal range of BMI (overweight or obese) and also has lifestyle diseases including PCOD / PCOS / pregnancy issues, thyroid, diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure issues. 

3) People in rural parts of India - where processed / packaged foods like sodas, new age foods and sweets like cakes, biscuits have infiltrated the market and moved people away from traditional foods and practices. While activity levels are higher, these areas are also getting urbanised with traditional forms of food, farming and practices being lost. For example - India had 100+ varieties of rice - endemic to various regions but now all rice being grown is only a handful of varieties and is also polished in machines leading to low nutrition content as compared to hand pounded / whole grain brown rice / red rice of various varieties!

4) People in the older age bracket (55 / 60+) - it is the norm in this age bracket to now have a medicine box to manage multiple chronic conditions and a few more medicines to manage side effects of these medicines! - Diseases such as alzheimer's (which is considered to be similar to diabetes for the brain), coronary artery disease, osteoporosis, blood pressure / cholesterol issues are common and also rob one of a high quality of life!

5) Pregnant women - This is an especially concerning one. A large number of things are currently wrong with modern childbirth. While C-section should be used only for cases where natural childbirth is not possible or is risky (in less than 1% of cases, C section is actually being used in 90% to 95% of cases in most Indian hospitals in tier 1 and tier 2 cities. Even 'natural' child births have indiscriminate usage of oxytocin and epidurals for child birth which increase the risk of still birth, brain damage and other complications. 

With Fitgalaxy we ensure that mothers and child / foetus are given optimal nutrition, stay active, get enough sleep, sunlight and are stress free throughout the pregnancy which increases chances of a natural child birth. 

For all the population groups above - Fitgalaxy has been able to achieve excellent results that often leave both user / client and their doctors pleasantly surprised! 

People regularly achieve their ideal body weight (typically users lose upto 9-10 kg in 3 months and 12-15 kg in 6 months), are able to build muscle mass, achieve a high level of health and fitness and reverse all lifestyle diseases completely in 6-12 months. For example, with our clients we have been able to get periods back on track for women with PCOD / PCOS, get thyroid levels under the correct range, control blood sugar levels for diabetics, reverse cholesterol and blood pressure issues as well naturally! 

Our results can be viewed with reviews of our clients on our android app - https://play.google.com/store/... and also on our Instagram page - https://www.instagram.com/fitg...

Our approach of focusing on fundamentals of a traditional lifestyle make it a sustainable and easy to implement and enjoyable approach for people as well - not requiring fancy food items, diets, pills, supplements or gym memberships. 

We believe that Fitgalaxy's approach to preventive healthcare should be at the centre stage of strengthening our healthcare systems and making them resilient to pandemics!

While diagnostics is an area of preventive healthcare that has made progress - we believe that helping people actually become fit and healthy so that they don't even get a lifestyle disease is of the utmost importance and this is an area where current solutions are highly ineffective!

With Fitgalaxy we have been able to achieve excellent results in helping people achieve sustainable health and fitness. People are able to lose fat (9-10 kg in 3 months, 12-15 kg in 6 months and upto 20 kg in 1 year), achieve their ideal body weight i.e. move from overweight and obese to a normal BMI, achieve a high level of fitness, preventing and completely reversing serious lifestyle diseases -  PCOD / PCOS, diabetes, thyroid, cholesterol, blood pressure issues which are prevalent across all demographics of society - from children, youth, middle aged and elderly populations. 

For vulnerable groups with low income levels in rural areas and the urban poor as well - lifestyle diseases which are completely avoidable robs them of their life's savings in medicines and treatments! For women, being unable to conceive due to PCOD / PCOS is devastating and leads to high expenditure on IVF procedures. 

During pandemics and also for spread of infectious diseases, our body's immunity plays a key role in determining its response to an infection - as seen during Covid-19. This is equally true of other infectious diseases. Thus the extent, spread and the health impact on society will reduce when the health and fitness level of people is much higher at a population level. 

It is to be noted here - that current scientific research strongly supports the fact that nutrition, exercise and lifestyle changes that Fitgalaxy is suggesting are highly effective at both preventing and reversing such lifestyle diseases. It is just that these are not yet implemented with equal vigour in the current system! This is what we want to change!

Fitgalaxy has over 200,000 users across our android app (99% of our users are on android app which is our key focus area right now), ios app and website with over 20,000 monthly active users. 

Many of the features are available for free on Fitgalaxy for maximum impact - for example health tips, free nutrition plan and exercise plans, social media features where users can create posts, ask questions and get guidance from coaches. 

We also have paid subscription plans for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months - where users are assigned a personal nutritionist and fitness coach who guide them with customised plans, and intensively guide them step by step to achieve their goals!

We have over 4000 subscribed users cumulatively (adding 200-250 new subscriptions per month) and an annual revenue run rate of USD 105000  (based on revenue in April and May 2021). 

As our focus area has been India first, over 98% of our users are from India and remaining from US, UK, Middle East, Europe etc. We will be expanding to countries outside India as well soon. 

We consider Fitgalaxy to be at growth stage. Fitgalaxy has been able to achieve excellent results at an initial scale and is poised for rapid growth. We aim to rapidly expand our impact and help over 100 Mn people become sustainably fit and healthy in the near future!

Fitgalaxy's approach to helping people become sustainably fit and healthy by focusing on a traditional lifestyle is innovative, very different from existing solutions and highly effective. 

When people who are overweight or obese want to 'get fit' - they typically end up following a 'diet', buy new forms of packaged and processed food which are low fat, low carb - and end up going the 'brown bread, whey protein, peanut butter, green tea, black coffee, eliminating grains or going the vegan' route. They also end up buying gym memberships which they are not able to utilise. 

The above doesn't yield results for the large majority of people and even for people who get results - these results are short term and not sustainable since people can't stick to a diet that is unnatural and deprives the body of major macronutrients or keep going to a gym all the time. Further - all processed / packaged foods sold as 'diet' foods in the market are actually highly unhealthy - being full of chemical preservatives, added sugar, artificial sweeteners, chemical stabilisers, added colours and flavours - which by themselves have a highly negative impact on health. https://www.fitgalaxy.in/artic... 

Most online apps, gyms, fitness coaches and nutritionists promote the above approach and this is what people find on offer but this actually leads to worse health and lifestyle diseases though it may end up causing weight loss temporarily. 

People who are overweight typically also have a lifestyle disease - again the existing solution is to visit doctors who mainly prescribe medicines which scientific research itself shows is only effective to 'manage' symptoms and not eliminate or control the root cause. 

With Fitgalaxy we are able to tackle both these issues (obesity and lifestyle diseases) with a back to traditions approach combined with modern scientific understanding of nutrition values, exercises and physiology of the body, impact of sleep and sunlight - which backs up the traditional approach even more! 

We are able to do this at scale using cutting edge technology and make it super convenient to people to achieve sustainable health and fitness!

Our usage of technology is innovative with features including: 

• 'Learn' modules which take people step by step through posts designed to help them understand how to get fit and healthy by using traditional principles
• A complete social media platform focused on health which helps people learn from with each other and from coaches in an enjoyable, social and motivational manner - with user and coach profiles, posts, likes, comments, q&a section, health tips, motivational results!
• Free tracking capabilities for users: Users can track nutrition, exercise, sleep, sunlight, motivation level, water intake, weight and their progress on each goal - with charts showing them their progress on all parameters
• Free health score for users based on key actions they have to take on a daily basis on nutrition, exercise, sleep, sunlight and motivation
• Modular nutrition plans, exercise plans and lifestyle plans which are created in a completely customised way by coaches for each user - using Fitgalaxy's databases on nutrition and exercise
• Large and digital databases which we are continuously expanding rapidly - Recipes, nutrition information for all Indian food items for each state of India, 350+ exercise videos with instructions. We plan to open source these databases in a controlled way to increase the variety and capture all food items across the world and increase number of exercises from different disciplines further
• AI chat bot which will give answers on health and fitness based on key traditional principles and practices combined with modern scientific understanding! This will allow us to give immediate answers and have intelligent conversations with people on their health and fitness for free at massive scale. We want to deploy this on our apps, website and other social media platforms as well in multiple languages and make it voice based for highest ease of use. 

We currently have had cumulatively over 200,000 people registered on Fitgalaxy. Out of this - around 4000 people are subscribed users (i.e. have taken a paid plan)

In 1 year time we want to get the cumulative number of people using Fitgalaxy to be 10 Mn and subscribed users to be 2-4% of this number (200,000 - 400,000 people)

In 5 years time we want to be able to reach 500 Mn users either directly as users of Fitgalaxy or having helped people in any way maybe just through strong messaging or our AI chat bot to become sustainably fit and healthy naturally. 

We are measuring our impact in terms of the number of people who Fitgalaxy has helped in becoming fit and healthy: 

• Number of people who have learnt about the natural approach to health and fitness from Fitgalaxy - about what actions they have to take on the 5 key areas of their Nutrition, Exercise, Sleep, Sunlight and Motivation to become fit and healthy! These may or may not be registered users but just people who have seen our posts on social media etc. Maybe 10-100x of registered users may have seen our ads or posts but how many of them actually understood can be estimated at by the conversion rate to registered users. 
• Number of registered users on Fitgalaxy's apps and website (Currently 200,000+)
• Number of subscribed users who have taken Fitgalaxy's plan with their own Nutritionist, Fitness Coach and tried to achieve their goals (fat loss, muscle gain, prevent / reverse a lifestyle disease, pregnancy / growing children etc). This number is currently 4000+ people and we are adding 200-250 people who subscribe every month. 
• Number of users who we know have achieved their results - we have over 1000 client reviews on our playstore (android app) itself with excellent results. 

Full time: 2 founders - Rajat Sawhney, Esha Sawhney, 1 software developer, 3 Nutritionists / Fitness Coaches

Part time: 20 Nutritionists & Fitness Coaches, 1 sales 

I and Esha (the founders) began this journey with an interest in improving our own health and fitness around 2012. We were working in corporate companies at the time. Over the years, our interest lead to deep research, reading hundreds of books, research papers on nutrition, exercise and health and fitness - testing logical arguments by ourselves. Esha was able to reverse her own thyroid level naturally and also get rid of acne completely! We both follow all Fitgalaxy principles ourselves!

At the same time, we saw that almost 99% of people we were meeting had a completely wrong view of what was needed to become fit and healthy. Governments as well as private companies were focused more on tertiary healthcare - on managing lifestyle diseases that can be avoided completely - incidences of which were negligible before the advent of modern packaged / processed food, modern cooking methods, sedentary lifestyles and disrupted sleep / sunlight patterns. 

We started Fitgalaxy in 2016 - it took us a lot of learning to build our own databases of food items, shoot exercise videos, build the android app, the ios app, website, learn marketing / technology, create a business model to scale up to a strong base with a win-win model for users as well as coaches, deliver excellent results to users while maintaining quality of service (we are at 4.7 / 5 star rated app on playstore with over 200,000 users and 1000 + reviews!)

We are now working on scaling up 100x in terms of number of users and revenue. We believe are able to learn all the skill sets required - technology, marketing, operations, creating, training and motivating excellent teams, creating content to drive this growth. 

We hire people purely based on how much we believe they would be able to contribute and enjoy learning the skill sets required as well! 

We have a highly diverse team with nutritionists and fitness coaches across India from multiple states and tier 1 / 2/ 3 cities and towns with a work from home model which offers them flexibility. In fact the majority of our coaches are women because they gravitated to this model!

We have also always had a happy and motivating work atmosphere focused on performance - which has allowed us to have super high retention rates! 

Success in the MIT Solve Challenge can help the Fitgalaxy solution gain visibility, partners and resources for a global reach and impact:

1. Visibility and Access: Make the solution visible and accessible to those who need it - at a population scale, within and beyond India. A key barrier to global impact is the limited appreciation of the problem and how widespread it is, as well as the effectiveness of lifestyle changes in addressing the root cause of poor health, obesity and the inexorable spread of lifestyle diseases - that have gained epidemic proportions. We believe that with MIT Solve - we will be able to move towards better visibility in India as well as globally and access new markets which will support us in our mission to maximise our impact on health and fitness at a population scale

2. Access to the right resources and funding: 
   1. Access to the right resources - for example developers with experience in AI, or marketing / design teams would be able to add invaluable expertise to our efforts and reduce our learning time to implement Fitgalaxy at scale!
   2. Access to funding will give us the ability to implement all the technology, marketing initiatives as well as add flexibility in hiring at absolute top speed and mitigate some of the challenges of scaling to the next level - to be able to create population level impact at rapid pace in the next few years in terms of the number of people we have helped become sustainably fit and healthy. 
3. Replication beyond India by joining up with 
   1. global partner institutions that can help Fitgalaxy add depth and resilience to its operational model, and 
   2. research institutions which can publish research studies on the impact of following the fundamentals of Nutrition, Exercise, Sleep, Sunlight and Motivation in reversing obesity and lifestyle diseases - maybe by tracking Fitgalaxy's client results as well at large scale!
   3. local social or business entities that can 
      1. adapt and augment Fitgalaxy content, training & resource material, by curating a database of traditional foods, ingredients, recipes, traditional methods of cooking and food preparation; macro and micro nutrients in these food items; and videos of traditional exercises and fitness methods;
      2. create implementation team including nutritionists and fitness trainers, to roll out Fitgalaxy in new regions.

One of Fitgalaxy's largest user segment is women - who have PCOD / PCOS - which causes irregular periods, hormonal imbalances and inability to conceive as well. Being unable to conceive due to PCOD / PCOS is devastating and leads to high expenditure on IVF procedures for women who are able to afford them while others are just left without any choice. 

In India PCOD / PCOS accounts for 19-21% of women in the child bearing age which is a massive proportion of the population. 

We also work with pregnant women, growing children - to ensure best possible development and outcomes of pregnancies. 

Our results with both PCOD / PCOS and pregnant women have been excellent - we have been able to reverse PCOD / PCOS in most cases within 3-6 months, with menstrual cycles becoming normalised and a large number of women have also been able to conceive much to their and our delight! 

Typically by following a traditional lifestyle focused on our key principles of Nutrition, Exercise, Sleep, Sunlight and Motivation - apart with reversing PCOD / PCOS, women also end up becoming fitter, losing fat and achieving their ideal body weight before pregnancy. 

Even during pregnancy - we ensure that they put on the right amount of weight and are highly nourished with traditional unprocessed whole foods which leads to positive outcomes in terms of both mother's and foetus / child's health!

We are currently working on Fitgalaxy's AI chat bot which will answer all questions on how to become fit and healthy - by following traditional practices in the areas of Nutrition, Exercise, Sleep, Sunlight and Motivation!

This advice will be customised based on the question asked and the user's health goals, state / country, current health stats (height, weight, activity level, gender, age), preferences

For example - a girl in Andhra Pradesh which is a state in India would be given a different answer and shown different food choices for the question 'What should I eat for breakfast to lose fat and reverse PCOD' as compared to a girl in Punjab (another state in India) who would have totally different local traditional foods. 

After we are able to create and release a highly valuable AI chat bot - that works extremely well across a huge range of questions for India's population in English language, we also want to work on different languages in India and then expand globally across different countries. 

We also want to be able to convert the AI chat bot in voice based guidance which would be highly valuable to people and create a large scale impact on people's health and fitness