COVID-19 has accelerated digitalisation in the healthcare space. Telemedicine services and online consultations are becoming new normal, and the use of smart devices and apps to monitor health is also increasing. 

Kolkata-based healthtech and lifestyle platform FRITZY+ aims to help people monitor their health with their smartphones. The app helps users keep track of physical activities, fitness sessions, and cardiovascular health. 

FRITZY+ was launched in January 2020 by cousin brothers Archan Paul and Soumya Pal. The mobile app correlates daily physical activities and cardiovascular health, and provides a real-time health score to users. The cousins, who completed their post-graduation in computer applications, have been working together since they launched Arputer Technologies, FRITZY+’s parent company, in 2010. 

Speaking to YourStory, Co-founder and CEO Archan says the idea of launching FRITZY+ was born last year while the duo was looking for a fitness app to track their daily activities and calories consumed.

“As foodies, desk workers, and people who were too lazy to work out daily, we wanted to know how many calories we were burning every day so we could eat fast foods guilt-free. There were Google Fit and Samsung Health…they had calorie counts and tracked steps, but did not give information in an easy-to-understand way. Other apps were too focussed on training and diet. None of them fit our requirement,” Archan says.

How can FRITZY+ help?

The app monitors cardiovascular health by keeping a track of the heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), cardiac output, and arterial stiffness. It also monitors daily physical activities such as move minutes, steps count, heart points, calorie count, etc.

According to Archan, the application tracks the parameters with sensors available in smartphones and also with smartwatches/bands that can be integrated with the app. These parameters are analysed in real-time using AI-powered algorithms, and a health score is generated.

“For many people, fitness training or gym sessions are not always feasible due to hectic lifestyle or age. Instead, simple daily activities such as a brisk walk, standing up and walking around for five minutes every hour during the workday, gardening etc help us stay fit and active. FITZY+ tracks all these activities that are often ignored,” he adds. 

The app also profiles users based on their fitness level and helps them improve their health score by suggesting lifestyle changes.

According to the co-founder, the app was launched in January in its beta mode to a selected set of users in India, Japan, Israel, and the US. After receiving positive feedback, the app made a B2B release in February. Under the B2B segment, bulk license deals are provided to businesses and offices who integrate the app with their own or third-party hardware to monitor the health of their own staff and customers. This was the time when COVID-19 began to spread across the world and FRITZY+ proved to be a tool to monitor basic health parameters. Studies have revealed that people with weak health and pre-existing conditions such as diabetes, blood pressure etc are more vulnerable to coronavirus.

“By then, the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown started and we were not very hopeful of the success of the product. To our surprise, we started to see significant growth in user adaptations in the B2B segment. By late June, we started receiving feedback that the app was being used by a significant number of users for remote monitoring of health and activities for individuals with COVID-19 exposure. We didn’t know about the disease when we built the app, but it helped during that time,” Archan says. 

Business and the way ahead

The co-founder and CEO revealed that the B2C version of the app was released on Google Playstore in July. The B2B version of the app has around 6,000 clients, but he refused to reveal names due to NDA restrictions. According to Google Play Store, the B2C app has been downloaded over 100 times. 

He added that around 35 percent of the total consumers were either COVID exposed (under home quarantine) or post COVID recovery who used the app to monitor their health.

“Since its launch, the app has been getting 200 percent growth in adding new users. Majority of its users are from India, the US, and Europe. As per server logs, a single installation of FRITZY+ is used by multiple users to track the health. FRITZY+ has a feature to host multiple users in different workspaces simultaneously,” Archan claims.

The co-founder clarified that currently the app is supported by a limited number of handsets and wearable devices.

“The fitness-related features can be used in any handsets that run at least Android 9 (Pie) OS and have graphics processing capabilities with FHD resolution. The cardiovascular feature of the app is officially supported in 10 Samsung flagship handsets.”

FRITZY+ has been sponsored by parent company Arputer Technologies, a boutique embedded mobility and cloud software technology company, with an initial investment of $1 million. 

The co-founder declined to divulge details about the revenue model, but said the B2C version of the app is available for free.

Speaking of future plans, Archan says the company aims to onboard 10,000 users. It is also working to enable the integration of Tizen and Google Wear-based smart-watches with the app.

“The long-term plan is to spin off this business unit and a possible acquisition,” Archan says.

(Edited by Teja Lele Desai)