On the 17th of September, 2017, Sahil Pruthi’s mother went through a major brain surgery. To take care of her, he and his sister took a sabbatical from work, and spent 9 months in her company, making sure all her needs were being met. During this period, Sahil felt hounded by the need to know why the surgery became necessary in the first place, and thus began an in depth research into nutrition, supplements, and clinical trials.
Sahil was an engineer by training and a product manager by trade and used his skills to develop a comprehensive diet and supplement plan, along with select clinical inputs borrowed from pertinent trials, that helped his mother’s recovery greatly. Five years down the line, she is now completely healthy and disease free.
Sahil is a graduate of NSIT with a degree in Computer Science Engineering, as a back-end developer, and began his professional life as a software engineer with Samsung Research India, Bangalore, but soon realized that his passion lay in start ups. So he moved on to Travel Triangle, one of the largest start-ups in India, as a product builder and manager. It was while working there that his mother’s surgery happened, and he and his sister decided to take long-term leaves from their respective workplaces.
After the 9-month long break, Sahil went back to his regular job, eventually shifting to Innovaccer, another leading start-up in the US Healthcare brand where he worked as a product manager in the B2B and B2C spaces. However, he continued his research into nutrition science and explored it in public through his Instagram page, Keto India(Now Livofy). The primary focus of the page was on lifestyle diseases that have become increasingly common in our current timeline, like Hypothyroidism, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), Diabetes, Hypertension, and Obesity.
The page gained steady traction over time, becoming a cultural touchstone of nutrition in general in India’s digital memory. Recognizing its branding potential, Sahil launched Keto India as a website with an automated regulation system that catered to the needs of each individual user. The in-house AI protocol would collect the data of the user and build a profile taking into account their needs and restrictions, before suggesting a full-fledged nutrition and supplementation plan that would help fix their weight loss and lifestyle diseases.
According to Sahil, most treatments for such lifestyle diseases, as suggested by doctors, stop working, and revert back to previous positions once the medicine is stopped. Keto India’s thesis stands apart in this context by attempting to fix the underlying issues instead of the symptoms, ensuring that the problems don’t recur.
Under Sahil’s enthusiastic leadership, Keto India(Now Livofy) has found extensive success in both India and abroad, with him even representing the company on Shark Tank India. There, although he was offered a lucrative investment offer from Ashneer Grover, MD of Bharat Pe, Peyush Bansal, CEO of Lenskart, Namita Thapar, ED of Emcure Pharmaceuticals, and Aman Gupta, CMO of BoAt of 1.6 crore rupees for 16% stake in the company, Sahil didn’t take the proposal owing to it falling short of his own valuation of the company.
In the end, Sahil was able to independently source around $550k worth of investment, and with its help, rebranded the company as Livofy. Sahil had been toying with the idea of expanding his focus beyond the purview of the ketogenic diet, to include other nutrition philosophies, and this change in nomenclature helped the company signal this broadened focus better. Livofy is one of the few startups that has also been selected for the Stanford Seed Program.
Under Sahil Pruthi’s experienced managerial direction Livofy, formerly Keto India, is primed to be the world’s go-to nutritional planning platform, as its AI protocol becomes consecutively richer with the data of additional users in its bank. The platform’s potential has also been recognized by the Stanford Seed Programme as well, where Livofy is one of the only start-ups that has been selected for training and expansion giving currency to its claim for continued growth and success.
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