Wellthy Therapeutics Success Story - A Leading Digital Therapeutics (Dtx) Company

Avantika Bhardwaj

Jan 19, 2023 — 10 min read

Wellthy Therapeutics Success Story

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Wellthy Therapeutics.

Standing in a doctor's waiting room is both cliché and terrifying, especially if you are afraid of the deadly virus. Here’s the game changer in the world of medical science: Digital Therapeutics (DTx). Digital therapeutics have been on the market for about ten years, but there have only been a few of them. DTx is a part of the broader digital health landscape, where the product is software-driven and evidence-based.

Wellthy Therapeutics is one such digital therapeutics company, focused on improving patient health through proven clinical interventions and behavioral models. In this article, you'll get to know more about Wellthy Therapeutics, its founders, products and services, business and revenue model, and more.

Wellthy Therapeutics - Company Highlights

Startup Name	Wellthy Therapeutics
Headquarters	Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Industry	Healthcare, MedTech
Founder	Abhishek Shah, Aradh Pillai, Prayat Shah
Founded	2015
Total Funding Raised	$8.5 million
Website	wellthytherapeutics.com

Wellthy Therapeutics - About and How Does It Work?

Wellthy Therapeutics is a digital medicine platform with proprietary clinical intelligence at its core and with therapy area expertise, behavioral algorithms, data analytics, and user experience design to assist all healthcare stakeholders in achieving real-world clinical and business outcomes. Wellthy Therapeutics designs and deploys clinically validated behavioral interventions for chronic disease management.

The platform candidates (for each therapy) are delivered through an industry-leading, prescriptible, patient-facing Android and iOS app, coupled with connected devices for monitoring and behavioral intervention and a constantly learning chatbot for real-time feedback.

Wellthy Therapeutics was born out of the realization that episodic care is not nearly enough to help individuals manage their chronic conditions effectively. Low health literacy, inadequate follow-up care, and poor adherence to treatment, caused by low beneficiary engagement in-between healthcare touchpoints, have led to poor non-communicable disease (NCD) outcomes.

Wellthy Therapeutics - Industry Details

According to the WHO, an estimated 1.28 billion adults worldwide aged 30-79 years have hypertension, with the majority (two-thirds) living in low- and middle-income countries and an estimated 46% unaware that they have the condition. Furthermore, only 42% of adults with hypertension are diagnosed and treated.

There are over a billion people globally who have or are at risk of a cardiometabolic condition, with a global cost of over 2 trillion dollars. 240 million diabetics live in Asia, and 800 million hypertensives are projected to live in Asia by 2025.

Wellthy Therapeutics' target beneficiaries are individuals suffering from or at risk of NCDs such as diabetes, hypertension, CKD, and dyslipidemia, both in India and globally.

Wellthy Therapeutics - Founders

Wellthy Therapeutics was founded by Abhishek Shah, Aradh Pillai, and Prayat Shah.

Abhishek Shah

Abhishek Shah is the co-founder and CEO of Wellthy Therapeutics, which inspires and enables people to prevent, manage, and control their chronic health conditions. Abhishek is a thought leader in DTx globally and in Asia. Prior to Wellthy Therapeutics, Abhishek co-led an early-stage capital fund, where he invested, built, and scaled healthcare ventures in Asia, and prior to that, he held leadership positions in a media conglomerate, a contract research and manufacturing pharmaceutical business, and a medical consumables business.

Prayat Shah

Prayat Shah is the co-founder and VP, of Partnerships and Alliances at Wellthy Therapeutics. Previously, he worked at KPMG as a management consultant, at Nielsen as a Client Solutions Executive, Customized Research (Pharma and Life Sciences), and at PwC Consulting as a Retainer - Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences. He holds an MBA from the Indian School of Business and a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Biological Sciences from Singapore's Nanyang Technical University. Hailing from a family of doctors, chronic disease management comes as a second skin to him, and he is passionate about solving the problem of chronic health conditions in developing economies.

Aradh Pillai

Aradh Pillai is the co-Founder and VP of Design and Engineering at Wellthy Therapeutics. He is an entrepreneur and avid problem solver. Earlier, he worked as the Senior Product Designer at OLA, the Lead Mobile Product at LetsVenture, the Head of Mobile Products at Antfarm, the Managing Director at Simrge Inc., the Head of Mobile Products at Verbat LLC, an Open Source Contributor at Cyngn, and he also founded CheckROM.

They all met through common connections and soon realized that they shared a common thread: their respective immediate families were battling chronic conditions like hypertension or diabetes. Thus, the team had a similar challenge to battle out. What is more important is that they all were and are like-minded and shared the same vision and approach, which makes it easier to work together.

Wellthy Therapeutics - Startup Story

The idea of Wellthy Therapeutics arose when Abhishek and Prayat's respective parents had chronic conditions like diabetes or hypertension. Therefore, the company understands the challenges faced by chronic patients.

Wellthy Therapeutics then identified the gaps and developed its products and services. The company first began its operation with a lean team of five members and a solid plan to fight chronic disorders systematically. With continuous positive responses and feedback, they focus on aligning their efforts with their goals and mission.

Abhishek's mother has had hypertension for a long time and was recently diagnosed with diabetes. The realization that the episodic nature of their healthcare systems was inadequate for chronic care management was the genesis of the idea of Wellthy Therapeutics.

Wellthy Therapeutics - Name, Logo, and Tagline

Wellthy Therapeutics Logo

An oft-repeated phrase that Wellthy Therapeutics has grown up listening to is ‘Health is Wealth’ and thus the name ‘Wellthy’ emerged as a combination of the two words "wealth" and "health." The logo depicts a victorious individual with two hands raised.

Wellthy Therapeutics - Vision and Mission

Their vision is to inspire and enable 10 million beneficiaries to control, manage, and/or reverse their chronic conditions by the end of 2030. In the process, they aim to save up to $10 billion in payor and national health costs. With their current partners spread across the pharma and insurance sectors, Wellthy Therapeutics projects to impact more than one million patients across six therapies and multiple markets.

Wellthy Therapeutics - Products/Services

The product aims to solve health problems by combining science, technology, and design to bring continuous, real-time care to beneficiaries 24x7 as a complement to the existing health infrastructure. In the process, Wellthy Therapeutics is pioneering an entirely new category of medicine known as "Digital Therapeutics" (DTx).

They design clinically validated digital health interventions for NCD prevention and management, which are deployed through a cloud-based technology stack comprising prescription therapeutics for beneficiaries, dashboards for health coaches, physicians, and paramedical staff, program analytics, and an AI-powered Chatbot that can be deployed across multiple languages and digital mediums.

The team equips healthcare professionals with patient data and decision support through coaching, physician dashboards, and EHR-integrated reports. They also extend these modular capabilities to real-world evidence (RWE), contract research organizations, and insurance for digital clinical trials and disease management.

As the last piece of the puzzle, Wellthy Therapeutics creates population-level dashboards for enterprise partners for aggregate analytics, pharmacovigilance, adverse event tracking, and RWE for live and pipeline medical products. Their technical expertise is complemented by a robust design thinking process that involves mapping patient empathy maps and journeys and solving unaddressed pain points. Their solutions have been catalyzed by a boost through regulatory approvals and recently enhanced internal data capabilities.

Wellthy Therapeutics - Business and Revenue Model

In a nutshell, Wellthy Therapeutics develops patient-focused, clinically validated solutions for healthcare partners (at various stages of the patient journey) and then shares a portion of that new revenue through a B2B2C channel based on proven outcomes.

Their business model has been successfully tested and implemented in the private healthcare sector in India and Singapore. Their platform is ready to scale across the Indian public health system and is designed to engage beneficiaries at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, and ensure financial protection to 50 crore Indians with national healthcare insurance.

Wellthy Therapeutics - Startup Launch

The company started with basic social media outreach by creating a Facebook group and creating an event. This helped them reach out to a filtered audience, especially those with chronic conditions. An informal roundtable discussion with tea or coffee was organized. Company representatives, including the founders, visited Marine Drive (a bustling locality in Mumbai) and distributed fliers about the company.

Soon after, Wellthy Therapeutics even reached out to doctors and partnered with them, as doctors are the primary influencers for patients. This helped them build their brand and procure their first set of beneficiaries.

Wellthy Therapeutics - Funding

To date, Wellthy Therapeutics has raised funding worth $8.5 million from various investors like Cipla, IIFL Finance, Saama Capital, BEENEXT, Currae Healthtech, growX ventures, and more.

Date	Round	Amount	Lead Investors
Dec 16, 2020	Venture Round	-	India EdisonTM Accelerator
Apr 13, 2020	Seed Round	$4 million	Saama Capital
Feb 18, 2019	Corporate Round	$1.5 million	Cipla
Mar 5, 2018	Seed Round	$3 million	BEENEXT, Currae Healthtech, growX ventures

Wellthy Therapeutics - Recognitions and Achievements

And, here’s when Wellthy Therapeutics is unstoppable:

Part of Google for Startups Accelerator 2020
Part of GE Healthcare Edison [X] startup program 2020-21
Part of Plug&Play Health, Silicon Valley 2020
Winner of the Ferrer4Future Challenge 2020 by Ferrer Pharma, Spain
2nd Place Winner and Judge's Price holder for the ‘Boston Scientific Connected Patient Challenge 2020’ sponsored by Google & Boston Scientific MA, US
Finalist at Ayushman Bharat’s ‘Grand Startup Challenge’ (Top 3/350+ startups). [Ayushman Bharat is the World’s Largest state-sponsored health scheme with 50 Cr potential beneficiaries]
Economic Times Health Award 2020: Best Technology Solution for Chronic Conditions
Won Frost & Sullivan Customer Value Leadership Award (India) 2020
Winner at GINSEP (German Indian Startup Exchange Program) Live Pitch 2020 (Category: Health)
Won the NASSCOM Top 10 most innovative technology products and services startups in November 2019
Bayer G4A Accelerator of the Growth Cohort 2019
Won Cipla Innoventia 2018, chosen from ~800 startups from Asia Pacific region
Recognized by American Diabetes Association as a Global Innovator in diabetes management in 2018
Frost & Sullivan Price/Performance Value Leadership Award 2018, for the South Asia Digital Therapeutics Market
Judges Pick Prize at the MSD Digital Innovation Summit 2017, chosen from ~600 Health Tech Companies from the Asia Pacific region
Graduated from Merck KGaA's Digital Health Accelerator in June 2017
Graduated from Swiss Re’s Global InsurTech Accelerator in 2017
ICICI Lombard's NOVA InsurTech Accelerator in 2016
Endorsed by RSSDI (India’s foremost Diabetes Research Organization) as India’s first prescribable intervention for T2DM in India

Wellthy Therapeutics - Challenges

The most difficult aspect for Wellthy Therapeutics was creating categories. Because the category of telemedicine or digital health did not exist, category creation was the primary focus.

When they started, the category was still in its infancy, and it is still not fully defined. They formed a group of like-minded individuals who saw potential in this field and shared a desire to make a difference. In 2017, one year after the company's launch, the company received additional funding from evangelists such as GrowNext, BeeNext, and Ranjan Pai, and the first Minimum Viable Product was presented. This was followed by another 13 pilots.

Wellthy Therapeutics - Competitors

Some of the competitors of Wellthy Therapeutics are:

Omada Health
Welldoc
Lark Health

Wellthy Therapeutics - Future Plans

Wellthy Therapeutics is currently headquartered in Mumbai, with a base in Bangalore. They have formed partnerships with leading players from the pharma, health insurance, medical devices, and hospital systems sectors.

The company has partnered with leaders in two segments: pharmaceuticals and insurance. In the pharmaceutical industry, they have alliances with companies like Roche, Cipla, Intas, and Abbott. In the insurance domain too, the company has partnered with prime industry players like ICICI Lombard and Aviva.

As they look to grow, they will be expanding their reach to other markets, both in APAC and the EU. Wellthy Therapeutics will also continue to drive product innovation and new business models with their partners in pharma, medical devices, and insurance to achieve further scale while continuing to make their product reimbursable through major private and public payers and becoming a credible voice for shaping policy around innovation and technology in public health.

FAQs

What is Wellthy Therapeutics?

Wellthy Therapeutics is a digital therapeutics company, focused on improving patient health through proven clinical interventions and behavioral models.

Who is the founder of Wellthy Therapeutics?

Wellthy Therapeutics was founded by Abhishek Shah, Aradh Pillai, and Prayat Shah.

When was Wellthy Therapeutics founded?

Wellthy Therapeutics was founded in the year 2015.

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