Special Startup Series: Leading the charge towards Health 5.0

Many studies have projected that prevention would dominate treatments on a 60:40 ratio by 2040. With its population still dominated by middle to low income families crippled by the high cost of aggressive last-minute treatments, India really needs such revolutionary change.

In such a backdrop, the informed health and wellness choices based on our respective genetic and metabolic profile could work wonders for us. Making it possible is Bengaluru based health-tech startup, Vieroots Wellness Solutions that offers highly personalized lifestyle modification recommendations based on proprietary geno-metabolic analysis powered by artificial intelligence.

Vieroots was founded in 2020 by Sajeev Nair, a renowned wellness evangelist and pioneer of Indian bio-hacking. Interestingly, the startup is backed by actor-turned-entrepreneur and angel investor, Suniel Shetty.

Vieroots’ products fall under three verticals – the main genomic wellness vertical that includes Personalized Epigenetic Lifestyle Modifications (EPLIMO) & Nutrigenome, then the nutritional supplements vertical, and finally digital biohacking tools. The company is also betting big on its new project, Limoverse to accelerate this expected growth trajectory. Dubai headquartered Limoverse is the world’s first blockchain based health and wellness ecosystem and metaverse that brings together health seekers and health & wellness providers on a global scale, so that they can transact seamlessly for health services using the platform’s native Limo crypto tokens.

Understanding the basics

 “I have been in the wellness industry for the past two decades, including in nutritional supplements, in their direct selling and in the personal development side. This led me to formulate Thought Process Reengineering (TPR), a psychological brain hacking framework for individuals and organizations, which proved to be a very effective and powerful model and made it a much-adopted corporate training framework across industries in India and the Middle East,” informs Sajeev Nair, Founder & Chairman, Vieroots Wellness Solutions.

Nair was always looking for scientific ways and means to bolster its effectiveness further and soon realized that the answer lay in biohacking, especially the ethical kind which is mainly personalized lifestyle modifications.

“Fortunately, the timing was perfect as the Human Genome Project (HGP) was already completed by then, and the genetic roots of hundreds of lifestyle diseases were getting published, as well as research about the kind of lifestyle modifications that can keep them at bay. That is how we could develop the breakthrough idea behind EPLIMO, our flagship product. EPLIMO stands for Personalized Epigenetic Lifestyle Modifications, and the word Epigenetic emphasises that these lifestyle modifications can override even the genetic predispositions to various lifestyle diseases,” he adds.

Founder’s Story

Sajeev Nair says he was one of the first Indians to undergo a genetic predisposition test in the US soon after it became available there.

“The results were an eye opener for me on a personal level and on an entrepreneurial level for the new opportunities it provided the wellness sector for adding unprecedented value. Only a few people know that I am personally a biohacker, which means that I have tried and tested hundreds of ethical biohacks by way of diets, supplements, exercises, yoga, sleep, meditation, intermittent fasting etc on myself so that I know what works and what doesn’t,” adds Nair.

Nair mentions how a middle class family is only a hospital bill away from insurmountable debt or even poverty. He cites this as a bane of modern medicine’s treatment-based healthcare protocols that literally waits for the disease to strike, before unleashing its arsenal of high-tech diagnostics and invasive and aggressive procedures.

“Medical treatments should be complemented with best available prevention-based protocols that are personalized for precision. This is what Health 5.0 is all about”

Sajeev Nair, Founder & Chairman, Vieroots Wellness Solutions

He justifies his argument: “Unfortunately, this approach is too risky and too expensive for most families, and this should be complemented with the best available wellness or prevention-based protocols that are personalized for precision. This is what Health 5.0 is all about, and EPLIMO is a solution in this category, and hence the long-term societal impact of Vieroots will be positive and momentous.”

Nair appreciates the role of his co-founders: “Vieroots could not have been possible without the unique contributions of our co-founders Adityanarayan and Sajeev VP who brought complementary skill sets to the drawing board apart from their deep passion for lifestyle modifications.”

Rooted in ancient wisdom

EPLIMO, a pioneering new-age healthcare solution is based on geno-metabolic assessment. It assesses the risk of developing lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, obesity, high BP, cardiovascular diseases, cancer etc. and design lifestyle modifications spanning diet, supplements, exercises, yoga, meditation etc. to keep health at its peak. It has combined ancient wellness wisdom and modern scientific research and on-boarded certified wellness coaches and wellness consultants to deliver next generation wellness solutions.

The key differentiator in Vieroots solutions is customisation. The service takes as its inputs the client’s Genetic Susceptibility Test and Metabolic Profile. Since these two datasets are complex and need to be assessed together, Artificial Intelligence is employed to analyse them and to come up with a detailed set of Personalised Epigenetic Lifestyle Modifications. These have been neatly implemented as an Artificial Intelligence-powered smartphone app, ‘EPLIMO’, that is available for both iOS and Android devices.

Other products from Vieroots include a family of research-based and scientifically validated nutritional supplements across three domains – performance, longevity and mental wellness.

Future Outlook

“Our growth so far has largely been as a bootstrapped startup, even though we had an early stage equity investor in Suniel Shetty, the Bollywood superstar and fitness icon who readily appreciated the unique value proposition of EPLIMO,” says Nair who is open to launching initial funding rounds, provided he gets the right kind of investors.

In its first full fiscal year of operation in FY’22, the company has registered around Rs 15 crore in revenue, which means it went from zero to 15 crore in less than 24 months. In the ongoing fiscal of FY’23, the company is set to more than double this revenue.

“For a mainly bootstrapped startup, this is a great achievement, and should speak volumes about the size of the market segment that we can eventually tap,” informs Nair who is confident about hundreds of crores of rupees in revenue within the next few years.