Keto India founder Sahil Pruthi has bagged an offer of Rs 1.6 crore on Shark Tank India. Four out of the five ‘sharks’ showed interest in his healthcare tech startup, which was founded in 2018.
The show is the Indian counterpart of the US Shark Tank, wherein aspiring entrepreneurs pitch their business models to a panel of investors.
Sahil took to Facebook to share his excitement. “Pitching at Shark Tank has been one of the craziest and coolest experiences I’ve had, and I’m super grateful to share the journey of what our rockstar team Keto India/Livofy has built! And having my mom with me there was beautiful.”
Sahil was inspired to launch Keto India after his mother underwent a major brain surgery around four years ago.
He and his sister had to leave their jobs to care for her for about nine months. But the incident pushed him to use these months to gain a better understanding of nutrition and health. “I wanted to understand why this surgery was needed in the first place. And could we do something to make sure it doesn’t get to that point?” he told the sharks during his pitch.
Sahil gave his mother a personalised nutrition plan and supplementation, and put her in clinical trials to improve her health. “It’s been four years. My mother is healthy, and here today,” he added.
Sahil’s pitch was approved by panelists Ashneer Grover of BharatPe, Peeyush Bansal of Lenskart.com, Namita Thapar of Emcure Pharmaceuticals and Aman Gupta of boAt. However, he turned the offer down, as the equity share they asked for was larger than Sahil’s offer of 1.25 per cent.
“We have got some valuable feedback and the sharks absolutely loved our business idea. The experience has been beyond amazing and has provided us with a great opportunity to work on ourselves and scale the same in order to grow in the industry,” read Keto India’s latest blog.
Casual hobby turned business plan
Sahil was a product manager who worked with organisations such as Innovaccer, Samsung, and TravelTriangle. His entrepreneurial journey began when he set up an Instagram page with his sister to spread awareness about dieting and personalised nutrition. It soon developed into a business plan. He now owns Keto India and Livofy, both of which focus on health and nutrition.
The company aims to “bust myths” about diets, and create an integrative patient engagement platform for chronic care management, to help people manage ailments like type 2 diabetes, PCOS, thyroid cancer, and weight gain. They have a team of qualified nutritionists and dieticians, who extend their services to over 16 Indian states and 25 countries across the globe.
Keto has over 3,000 paying clients and 45,000 monthly active users across desktop, mobile and app. While Keto focuses on a healthy lifestyle using keto diet, Livofy provides all types of diet plans personalised for each client.
According to a report by Outlook India, “Sahil would like to scale the company up and impact lives in India and across the globe by helping them manage and reverse their various chronic ailments. The company holds the perspective of helping more people, and gaining exposure by assisting individuals to opt for a healthy lifestyle and integrative diet.”
Sources:
Image credits: Twitter/ Shark Tank India
Edited by Divya Sethu
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