Health consciousness has increasingly moved from lip-service to lifestyle cues, with interest in smartwatches to track health data or heart rate, step count ring perfection as a source of pride on social media posts and the rise of ‘healthy eating’ as a trend, but a glaring paradox still stares us in the face – it all still happens in isolation, with little direction towards actual health or wellness benefits, and as a result, preventative healthcare has not grown proportionately. Indian startup RightLife wants to make personalized health plans a reality, including tracking what a user eats and how much they exercise. All without any new expensive wearable devices such as smartwatches, rings or trackers. His proposal is, everything you already have (even if it’s just a phone), comes together as a collective data set for accurate guidance.
In a conversation with HT, RightLife co-founder Adit Mukherjee explains that smartwatches and wearables are great at what they do, but they mostly lack context as the user cannot understand the data holistically. “Unfortunately staying healthy for a week won’t really yield any long-term results,” he sums up the situation perfectly. We asked Mukherjee why users today use separate apps for sleep, food, steps, mindfulness — none of which talk to each other, and why he believes the health industry has tolerated fragmentation because it’s easier to solve for one metric than for the whole human being. “We believe the future of health is in integration, not in isolation,” he says.
Mukherjee talks about India’s health awareness trajectory, structuring the RightLife proposition without wearables in the mix, and how challenging it was to keep proprietary algorithms with that necessary Indian customization. Edited excerpts.
Q. India is definitely more health conscious than ever before – step counting, calorie counting, physical health metrics, all becoming mainstream. Yet preventive care has not increased. Where exactly do you think the system is stuck? Is it a lack of motivation, affordability of wearables, confidence or consistency?
Adit Mukherjee: I think it’s consumer demand and their expectations from preventive care that have changed. By and large, people’s expectation from any so-called “preventive health” activity, whether it’s going to the gym or making a diet plan, has been about outward appearance rather than inner feeling. I think the conversation is now turning towards dealing with bigger issues like diabetes and high blood pressure. We need to make the leap from vanity-driven to vitality-driven. The essential knowledge and habits have remained largely unchanged over the years, it’s just that people have now begun to prioritize the concept of overall health rather than just losing a few kilos.
I think all the tools are there. Wearables do a great job of tracking trends with options ₹3,000 – ₹50,000. Holistic apps and chat models make it easy to get all your data talking to each other and the inspiration can make you a machine for a week. But herein lies the catch. Unfortunately staying healthy for a week won’t really yield any long-term results. I believe that the day the scale of preventive health increases in India, a large section of the population will realize that staying healthy only means being consistent with great fundamental habits. At the same time, it is continuous learning and incremental improvement that makes good impacts over time.
Q. Tell us how the RightLife proposition is structured without any wearable devices. How confident were you from the beginning that this approach would work?
Adit Mukherjee: RightLife focuses on health outcomes. We use a blend of data, lifestyle habits and consistent behavior to provide personalized health information and actionable information. Even without a wearable, our facial scan is enough to give us enough context about your baselines and potential improvements. To illustrate my point with a simple example, if you walk 20,000 steps a day, which is much more than normal, we are able to use this data and calculate how much extra sleep you will potentially need that night to recover. It’s a simple relationship between your daytime activity and sleep. We all know this link exists, it’s just a matter of making someone aware of the real scientific implications.
From the very beginning, I was personally convinced of two things. First, your sleep, nutrition, mental and physical health are correlated. Secondly, there was a gap in the market for an easy-to-use tool that I needed to understand before delivering the next steps (whether in the form of education or action) and not promote my own course or method as if it was the only thing that worked.
The beauty of health is that there is no set method, just an assortment of easy-to-follow rules. As long as those rules are created based on your understanding of your life and situation, you’ll find that more people want to be a part of what you’re creating and stay healthy.
Q. I believe you have deployed proprietary algorithms to understand workout, sleep, food, and all other health data. How do you tailor these to specific Indian habits, and drive behavior change without giving false assurances?
Adit Mukherjee: The algorithms we wrote are based on peer-reviewed research papers at the human biology level, so we haven’t made any special changes to them. However, where the Indianisation lies is in the simplicity of the approach. India is a trust lacking and value based country. We want things relevant to our habits and experience. This is the beauty of our AI layer. Our models, which are currently in beta, are designed to move away from repetitive data entry toward a conversational interface that simulates the entire app experience to the user’s real life. When you combine this level of understanding with a clear baseline based on scientific facts, we ensure that our signals provide objective accountability rather than comfortable confusion. It’s all about walking that fine line between health principles and a person’s circumstances.
Q. Most users today use different apps for sleep, food, steps, mindfulness – none of which talk to each other. Why has the industry tolerated fragmentation for so long?
Adit Mukherjee: This is a very good question, and it’s one I asked myself a few years ago when my father was brainstorming an app concept. I believe the health industry has tolerated fragmentation because it is easier to solve for one metric than the whole human being, but we believe the future of health lies in integration, not isolation. The health industry saw that the market was apt to promote an approach and then simply say “my way or the highway.” That’s why you see IP like 75 Hard, Keto, and other approaches take center stage, and people are under the misconception that following one of them is the only way to be healthy. I don’t think anyone has really taken the time to understand the first principles and revisit the core issue.
When AI came along a few years ago, correlation became possible. However, the use of AI is entirely defined by the quality of the questions you ask. If you are not already health conscious, it becomes very difficult to utilize it to its full potential. So we try to ask people the right questions as well as map out their relevant data, get their perspective on things, and then use that to build a personalized model that is more relevant in the long term. So you’re not completely dependent on knowing everything on day one, and we know how to send you right-sized content or little pieces of guidance that get you moving.
Q. How do you see India’s health awareness converting into true preventive healthcare based on actionable metrics, and how do you expect digital health co-pilots to evolve with the functionality that you perhaps have in testing labs but not in consumer versions yet?
Adit Mukherjee: I think starting out, you’ll see a lot of health concepts become mainstream that provide a better understanding of the human body. I think the current environment and shocking health conditions will motivate people to take more steps towards better habits today, and personal health intelligence platforms will play a role in this. Ultimately, true market fit will emerge when these platforms stop acting as digital encyclopedias and start acting as “behavior engines” that translate exhaustive data analysis into real-world health outcomes, making the right health choice for the user the path of least resistance.
