Shahid Akhter, editor, ETHealthworld, spoke to Dr. Lalitha Reddy, Founder and Director, Wholesome Medtech Private Ltd, to know more about the growing awareness in supplement market and challenges associated with introducing new products.

Men’s Health in the wellness Market
Men’s health has always been traditionally ignored globally as well as in India. But then there is no amount of awareness and it has picked up over the past few years abroad. And we can see the change in India too, probably because of the millennial mindset and people willing to talk about their issues and the willingness to get better and improve their quality of lives has probably added to this growth in the men’s health and wellness market. So, over the last two to three years there has been a significant growth of around 16% to 17% CAGR in the men’s health and wellness industry in India.

Covid-19 Impact on the Wellness market
There’s been a significant change from the pre pandemic to the pandemic era. There was not much keen interest or awareness in a person’s personal health or wellness part of it. But then once the pandemic hit us and were taken by surprise and then we figured out that we do not have medicines or we did not have a vaccination. At that point of time, the focus for everyone starting from the healthcare industry as well as an individual who’s more onto how do I prevent myself from getting this or how do I heal faster and with so much of information about how to keep ourselves healthy, how to avoid infections, and how to recover faster.

Now everybody is aware and more conscious about their health and wellness. Now, previously, who knew about what zinc was? Who knew about whether vitamin C and vitamin D would help us recover faster? Now, if you ask anyone now, we are so aware of things like immune boosting foods and how do we keep ourselves healthier? And how does a bit of activity help us? Why it is important to sleep better and how it helps in immunity and such things. Now the word immunity has gained so much of importance that worldwide the growth rate for all these immune boosting foods has grown by 40% over the last one and a half to two years.

So, in a way, we could say that Covid has helped us become more conscious and more aware of our health and wellness and has made each and every person realize that preventive health is much, much more important than curative health. It is very important to develop healthy lifestyles, healthy habits and remain healthy.

Doctor to Docpreneur
In 2020 I was associated with hospitals. I was heading a 1000 bedded Yashoda hospitals, which is a corporate hospital chain in Telangana. So, when we had this Covid initially we could see the amount of panic that people were facing even when they had minor symptoms.

They used to rush to the hospital, they used to run out of beds. There was not enough nursing and paramedical staff and even the testing kits for Covid were not available at that point in time with the lockdowns, it was so difficult with the logistics to get the PPA kits. So, when we saw all this panic in the people that got me and a group of doctors thinking this group who are always interested in preventive health as compared to curative health, you can always prevent it. So, with this in mind and with the experience of the past 25 to 30 years that we’ve had in the healthcare industry, all of us thought, why not?

We got together and do something that works more towards preventive health and educate people and give answers to raise their quality of life, their immunity status and something which would help them from falling sick.

ForMen and ForKids Supplements
We wanted to focus more on men’s wellness and kids’ wellness for a few reasons. See now with this team of doctors and experts and Pharma experts that we had collectively, we were a team from all across the country. So, we had experience of more than lakh of patients over so many years. So, what we had gained and what we had seen was that there is a certain inhibition for men to talk about their issues.

Anyway, you will come to a hospital and meet a doctor. But then for simple issues which ruin your quality of life, which give you unhappiness, which also reflects negatively on your family. Like say, for instance, sleep issues. I can’t imagine a man just going and telling a doctor I’m not able to sleep well, do something about it or I’m having performance issues on and off. I’m not able to father a child or I keep falling sick. So, these issues, which they were not very open to talk about and which could be easily dealt with and which reflected negatively on the rest of the family, which affected their quality of life, also very negatively leading to unhappiness which they refuse to talk about. We wanted to address this hidden problem and coming to children, well, as a mother myself, we do our best to give whatever best we can to our children. But then in the present-day scenario, with both the parents working and even the quality of stuff that we can get and give our children and nuclear families less family support, which is not able to do enough.

As far as the nutrition is concerned, even children of the wealthy families are developing vitamin deficiencies. So, a lot of inputs that were given by paediatricians from across the country, they said parents brought their children saying the child is so restless, the child is not able to concentrate, you work the child up. He has a magnesium deficiency. This was a child from an affluent family who has enough money to eat. But then the child has magnesium deficiency or there is a stunted growth. My child keeps saying that he has pain or he keeps falling frequently. So, we wanted to create a platform which parents could trust, a platform by doctors who would give expert advice, which a parent can trust blindly without having to do their homework.

Formulation and Ingredient Challenges
We did have quite a few challenges. We had the medical knowledge. We had the expertise. We knew what formulation would work. One of the first challenges when we went out when we formulated a product and then we wanted someone to manufacture it. Most of the manufacturing facilities had their own fixed formulations, which were made by we don’t know by whom and then the quality of the ingredients that they used were also quite bad. Just to give you an example, we wanted to make a magnesium plus zinc plus vitamin Effervescent tablets. And then all the manufacturers wanted to give us only magnesium oxide.

Also, we know that magnesium oxide is only 4% absorbed in the body. So, if I give them 100 milligrams of magnesium, four milligrams would go into their body unnecessary. It is a waste. And then it added to the metallic taste. So, we had to look around for those manufacturers, those ingredient providers and those partners who were as conscious of quality and purity as we were.

I had to find someone who was willing to give me the Bishofite salt of magnesium, or who wanted to give me the picolinate salt of zinc. So, this kind of quality guys were a little difficult to find. But then we did our research and finally we were able to partner everybody, whether it is branding, whether it is packaging, whether it is sourcing of ingredients. It was a manufacturing facility, whether they had all the certifications that we wanted, and they were willing to do it in the dosages that we wanted.

We had so many products. We had analysed a lot of products, and then we saw that they said it was a multivitamin gummy. There were only four vitamins in very poor dosages. We follow the ICMR chart that is given for the Indians. The requirement for Indians is different as compared to requirements of Americans.

Wholesome Medtech Platform
So, we have the online platform for men. It is ForMen.Health and for children, it is getforkids.com, so you can log on to the website. And then we have all the products on display.

And then we have a blog section too. Which is very important and which is being very well appreciated. Here we give information and educate people about the issues that they are facing and about the products as well as each and every ingredient. So, once you want a product, once you click on that, the entire information about the product is given, like what all it contains, what are the exact proportions of the ingredients and what does each ingredient do and about the dosages? And if at all, if there are any side effects, what are the possible side effects and what are the precautions that you have to take, the ideal time to consume the products, etc.

Wholesome Medtech: Future Plans
Now, in the future, we plan to expand on the products as well as the categories. Our main focus will be to solve the issues that are being faced by people as far as their health and wellness is concerned. So we will go that way. Our primary motive is to improve the health of people. And then, like I said, our focus is always on preventive health and improving the quality of life of Indians. So not only would be doing this product expansion and the category expansion, but we will also like to explore the international markets too very soon.