Indian well being and wellness startup HealthifyMe has launched an AI-powered characteristic that acknowledges Indian meals from photographs for calorie consumption logging, permitting customers to trace their meal consumption extra effectively.
Monitoring Indian meals by means of photographs is difficult given there’s a huge number of cuisines. Additionally, quite a lot of folks eat on a plate referred to as Thaali in Hindi, which comprises totally different parts of varied meals objects. A mannequin has to acknowledge all that together with portion sizes.
HealthifyMe’s newest characteristic, referred to as Snap, lets customers take photos of their meals and attempt to acknowledge meals objects captured throughout the body. Alternatively, customers can even give entry to their gallery, and the app scans meals photos mechanically. Customers can evaluate these photos and meals objects inside them later. This permits customers to take photos from their cameras and take care of the calorie logging later.
When it comes to privateness, the corporate says the mannequin on the system detects meals photos and sends them to servers for particular dish recognition. The corporate additionally mentions its gallery-based mannequin works higher because it has extra time to acknowledge meals objects than the choice to take photos of your meal for recognition.
Picture Credit: Healthifyme
If the mannequin detects there are a number of objects in a picture, Snap will ask you to faucet on an merchandise and add it to calorie monitoring. Customers will see an adjustable rectangular field to concentrate on totally different objects.
HealthifyMe’s Snap characteristic making an attempt to acknowledge meals in a plate Picture Credit: Screenshot by TechCrunch
HealthifyMe Co-founder & CEO Tushar Vashisht advised TechCrunch that the corporate began as a food-tracking app virtually 11 years in the past and that is still the first use case for its free customers.
“It’s arduous to have interaction with meals monitoring at occasions as a result of you need to bodily kind and keep in mind to log meals. So we wished to extend retention and engagement with a characteristic like Snap,” he stated.
Vashisht stated that the startup had tried implementing image-based meals recognition over time, however the availability of higher generative AI fashions made it simpler to create Snap. The corporate stated the characteristic at the moment is skilled to acknowledge 150,000 Indian meals objects.
Picture Credit: HealthifyMe
Healthifyme claims to supply 60–70% accuracy when it comes to mechanically recognizing meals. Even when the mannequin doesn’t acknowledge the meals merchandise correctly, customers nonetheless get options about what the merchandise may probably be, the corporate stated. The corporate has human reviewers who take a look at false recognitions and proper them. Moreover, customers can manually tag these falsely acknowledged images to enhance the mannequin. Vashisht asserted that he’s assured that within the subsequent month, the accuracy of the mannequin might be greater than 80%.
Notably, HealthifyMe shouldn’t be alone within the race, as different corporations are additionally engaged on AI-powered meals recognition. Samsung’s meal planning platform Samsung Meals plans to introduce this characteristic subsequent 12 months. Former Google Lens engineer Wade Norris’s startup Snapcalorie can also be engaged on the identical downside with backing from Y-Combinator, Index Ventures, and Accel.
Within the subsequent few weeks, HealthifyMe goals to offer extra choices to customers for meals logging. With the launch of Snap, it’s permitting customers to ship photos to HealthifyMe WhatsApp or tag them on X with a meals picture. The corporate is engaged on a voice enter characteristic together with enhancing its present AI-powered assistant Ria.
HealthifyMe, which has raised over $130 million in capital so far from Buyers like LeapFrog Ventures and Khosla Ventures, has a primary paid plan beginning at $4.80 (₹399) per 30 days that provides customers entry to an AI-powered health and diet assistant, meal planning, and wholesome recipes. The corporate additionally affords pro-paid plans ranging from $48 per 30 days (₹4,000) with options like an AI-based meal planner, diet and health coaches, and a wise scale.
The upper tiers of the Professional plans have extra advantages similar to a number of physician consultations, metabolic panel checks, and steady glucose monitoring (CGM) units. The corporate stated it has greater than 200,000 customers as subscribers with almost 40% of them paying for the Professional plan.
In 2020, HealthifyMe partnered with Indian meals supply service Swiggy to curate wholesome meals and eating places. The corporate it’s already in talks with a number of meals and grocery providers that might leverage its expertise.