Ritu Soni SrivastavaFounder of Obino Published On: Wednesday, September 21, 2016 Views 5880

Obino is a virtual Weight Loss & Health coaching solution on your mobile & has been used by over three lakh Indians to lose weight, get fit and become healthier. With a 4.4 Rating on the Google Play Store & thousands of delighted customers in India & abroad, Obino helps its users by intelligently pairing each of them with their own personal health coach, who work one-on-one to develop customized diet, fitness and lifestyle regimes to achieve their health goals – be it losing weight, getting fitter or improving their health outcomes. All this is done via the mobile phone, leveraging the unique ecosystem of the Obino app, which provides a holistic weight loss & health coaching solution on its app with:

Expert health coaches

Indian calorie counter (powered by India’s 2nd largest indian-foods & exercise database)

Intelligent recommendations on food & exercise

Personalized indian diet plans

Easy fitness plans

Dietician-created healthy recipes

Compelling articles, tips and blogs from experts and bloggers

Obino coaches also work in tandem with the medical practitioners of our users to ensure health coaching that complements lifestyle & chronic disease management.

Obino was actually inspired by my own personal journey of weight loss after the birth of my beautiful baby girl, almost seven years ago. Like most young mothers eager to regain control over their bodies and their weight, I had a not-so-pleasant experience with the traditional vendors of weight loss – which was not only expensive and inconvenient but also non-transparent, leading me to feel like I was being held to ransom over my own health.

I firmly believe that everybody should have instant access to the knowledge and motivation that they needed to achieve their health goals & that too conveniently, given their busy lifestyles. This was why Obino took the shape of a mobile app, since healthy choices are made at least 30-40 times per day & the only tool that is consistently around at such times is the mobile phone.

I also wanted to have Coaches & Experts come to their users, instead of the other way around, thereby putting the power in the hands of the user. Accordingly, Obino’s coaches strive with every engagement to not just inculcate healthy habits, but also help our users learn how to manage their own health in the long term.

Expect and be disappointed.

Traditional health businesses are built on trust and credibility because people literally put their health in the hands of these businesses.

The challenge in a health-technology startup is to build that trust and credibility without any face-to-face interaction and in the case of an emerging venture, with limited marketing monies for brand building and advertising.

We let our users and our product do the talking for us. In health businesses, the proof of the pudding is in the eating! In addition, in our case, in results! We have over 30,000 kilos of weight lost on the platform by even our free users in the last few months alone. And our paid users typically lose 2-3 kilos per week with the stress on a human to human coaching model which is learning-based and is a high-touch model, which allows users to connect with their coaches on an average of six to nine times a day – which is extremely rare in any other fitness or weight loss solution, both online or offline.

Founded by myself, Vishal Soni and Yogesh S in August 2014, we raised a pre-seed round of funding in early 2015 from Delhi-based health-tech incubator, Healthstart. Post this; we have raised a seed round of funding from RoundGlass Partners in December 2015. RoundGlass Partners is a socially conscious global firm spurring innovation and disruption in digital health and wellness.

We’ve actually not encountered any such brain drain problems as people who join us do so because they are passionate about making a difference to people’s lives.

• Imagination
• Persistence
• Optimism

Mix panel for App Analytics

WhatsApp for Communication

Every morning, I make my To Do List in my notebook.

In addition, every time I finish a task, I cross it off.

Tremendous satisfaction

I wish I was more disciplined. I still tend to give way to impulse very often

One tip to success:

Believe in yourself. Completely!

One mistake you believe every individual must avoid:

Discourtesy. It Will come back to bite you in the butt!

One most important lesson that you have learnt till now:

You cannot avoid failure. So you might as well learn from it.

To grow Obino into a world-class health coaching product that makes a real and measurable difference in people’s lives.

I would startup earlier

• Kerala
• Goa
• A Library

“When you get there, there isn’t there anymore!”