Aishwarya Rai Bachchan Backs Healthcare Startup Possible

Nutrition-based healthcare startup Possible (previously known as Truweight Wellness) has reportedly raised INR 5 Cr ($683K) from Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as a part of a larger funding round of INR 15 Cr ($2 Mn).

Several ultra-high net worth individuals and institutional investors are expected to participate in this round, the company’s regulatory filings showed. According to ministry of corporate affairs filings accessed by Inc42, Truweight Wellness Private Limited had issued an offer letter, on September 8 last year, to raise INR 6.69 Cr from Nilu Poddar, Kirti Kumar Pathak, Bikesh Ogra, Kannan Krishnan, Vikas Bansal and Hemant Mehta.

It was looking to allocate INR 61,681 Compulsorily Convertible Cumulative Preference Shares (CCPS) of INR 10 each at a premium of INR 1076 each through preferential allotment in various tranches. The company has received INR 2 Cr from Pathak in exchange for INR 18,416 shares, on November 23, 2020. Prior to this, Possible had raised funding from Kalaari Capital as a part of Series A in 2015, and Blacksoil in 2017.

Possible was founded by Vishnu Saraf and Megha More in 2015. It offers research driven nutrition service and healthy food products that lead to sustainable health, weight loss and management of lifestyle diseases. The programme includes a personal coach that assigns a customised diet plan. It claims to help more than 40K people in losing weight and managing diseases.

The company will use this capital to expand into a newer market within India, ET reported.

The company had announced its rebranding back in January 2021 as a part of its process to start pan-India services this year. The company’s COO and cofounder More said, “Our mission is to help individuals live a disease-free life by using food as medicine. Therefore, we bring specially picked superfoods from around the world. The premium-quality ingredients such as spirulina, moringa, quinoa, and garcinia used in our products boost a healthy diet.”

According to a RedSeer report, there were about 90 Mn health-conscious individuals (HCI) in India in 2018, and the number is expected to grow by 1.4x to reach 130 Mn by 2022. But with the pandemic, the customers in India are tilting more towards healthy diets and building their immunity.

The segment was also growing prior to that, which led Swiggy to enter this domain in January 2020 in partnership with Healthifyme to start a new listing FitPicks for restaurants to offer healthy food in four metropolitan cities. The new listing offered food from over 700 Swiggy’s partner restaurants. The development was an aftermath of 249% increase in healthy food order on Swiggy.