E102: Tushar Vashisht (CEO, HealthifyMe)

The Desi VC: Indian Venture Capital | Angel Investors | Startups | VC

Tushar Vashisht is the Co-founder and CEO of HealthifyMe, a digital health and wellness company that provides smart meal plans personalized by expert nutritionists and customized workout plans with certified fitness coaches. The company has raised just over $100M from Khosla Ventures, Chiratae Ventures, Athera Venture Partners, Blume Ventures among several others.

Vashisht began his career on Wall Street at BlackRock. He later joined Deutsche Bank as a corporate finance analyst in San Francisco before moving to Singapore. In 2009, he joined the Aadhaar project headed by Nandan Nilekani, and in 2012 he co-founded HealthifyMe with Mathew Cherian and Sachin Shenoy.

Episode Notes:

1. Introduction (2:50)

2. What led Tushar to found HealthifyMe (4:05)

3. How did Tushar and his team validate their HealhtifyMe thesis? (8:40)

4. How do you find early adopters and solicit feedback as founders? (13:48)

5. How does the life of a founder change when they raise capital (22:05)

6. The pandemic's impact on HealthifyMe as a company (28:55)

7. Which is more difficult: building in the early stages or empowering leaders within an organization? (36:47)

8. Tushar’s frameworks for decision making (39:55)

9. Tushar's advice to his younger self (44:52)

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Bonus: Ud ja Re by Tushar Vashisht

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Social Links:

HealthifyMe on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HealthifyMe

Tushar Vashisht on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tusharvashisht

Podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedesi_vc

Akash Bhat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bhatvakash

Podcast on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thedesivc

Akash Bhat on Instagram: https://instagram.com/bhatvakash