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New Age Healthcare Startups Building Sustainable Weight Loss Solutions

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<b>By Kuonal Lakhapati, Co-Founder and CEO, 23BMI</b>An inspiring and motivational entrepreneur, Kuonal demonstrates first-rate interpersonal skills with the ability and the passion to develop the vision of any company he manages

About Obesity
Obesity is a complex and chronic disease that is influenced by multiple factors. Some of the strongest contributors to this problem are physiological, genetic, environmental, and socio-economic factors. Obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. As per a survey conducted in 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults who were 18 years and older, were overweight. Out of these, 650 million were obese. Another survey conducted in 2019 mentioned 38 million children under the age of five were obese. Like any other chronic disease, long-term management of obesity requires a holistic approach, which includes lifestyle changes, different therapies, surgery, and more. This space certainly has gained a lot of attention by quite a few companies who see it as a big problem and are working towards solving it with the help of innovative methods and cutting edge technologies. Different companies are dominating different segments, few of them are mentioned below.

Technology:
Adipo Therapeutics is developing a disruptive technology platform composed of polymer-based nanoparticulate drug delivery system to induce adipocyte browning as a safe and effective therapeutic solution to treat obesity.

Such an enabling technology platform can also be readily adapted to treat a broad spectrum of diseases such as fatty liver disease and atherosclerosis


This innovation combines the recent discovery of the role played by Notch signaling in adipocyte plasticity with advances in polymer-based drug delivery. This technology offers several unique value propositions including sustainable weight loss, improved glucose homeostasis, systemic metabolism, and minimized off-target side effects. Such an enabling technology platform can also be readily adapted to treat a broad spectrum of diseases such as fatty liver disease and atherosclerosis.Companies like Lumen have introduced hardware and mobile application to accurately measure metabolism, constantly track it, and guide accordingly about what to consume to ensure weight management goals are achieved.

bNutraceutical Products:
Companies like Soylent and Huel have introduced Nutraceutical products in the form of meal replacement beverages & snacks in ready to consume format. The popularity of these companies is increasing as their products are enabling people to replace unhealthy meals with a low calorie ready to consume snack that helps in maintaining weight. 23BMI, another new-age venture is disrupting this space with its in-house developed proprietary meal replacement products in the form of smoothies and soups and is increasingly becoming popular amongst health-conscious people.

Their unique solutions help people achieve a weight loss of about 4-6Kgs/Month without the need to hit the gym. They also provide a dedicated health coach to each client and also use technology for better client engagement serving across 6 countries.

Behavioral Science:
Noom is the world’s leading behavior change company, disrupting the weight loss and healthcare space. By combining the power of psychology, artificial intelligence, and mobile tech along with more than 1000 personal health coaches, Noom helps people live healthier lives by changing unhealthy habits. Noom is the first company to introduce a virtual diabetes prevention program. Leading pharmaceutical and healthcare companies are already using the Noom platform to improve treatment outcomes for patients worldwide.

Health & Fitness Apps:
Quite a few mobile applications have emerged in the last couple of years which are helping track the calories consumed, calories burned, the type of exercise they should be doing to achieve their health goal, and others. Most of these mobile applications are integrated with wearable devices to track the calories consumed making it easy and convenient for people to lose weight the DIY way.