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Business News/ Companies / People/  Anti-Portfolio | 'If you see a great team with a huge opportunity, it’s not prudent to get too hung up on traction'
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Anti-Portfolio | 'If you see a great team with a huge opportunity, it’s not prudent to get too hung up on traction'

Despite a passionate team, HealthifyMe as a company ethos always had a ‘product first’ background
  • One key lesson for us from this was to be more open to learning about ongoing trends and market future from entrepreneurs
  • Madhur Goyal, Angel InvestorPremium
    Madhur Goyal, Angel Investor

    As an angel investor for the past five years, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. One of my greatest regrets is not investing in HealthifyMe, India’s No.1 health and nutrition application. It had all the right ingredients—an impressive founding team, a disruptive idea, and a working model. In the early three years, the company struggled a lot but soon raised a 1 crore angel fund from investors Raj Mashruwala and Sashi Reddi.

    Despite a passionate team, HealthifyMe as a company ethos always had a ‘product first’ background and was not focusing on building a profitable monetization strategy within the app. As a result, the company was unable to get more money to scale itself and, in July 2014, completely ran out of funds. There were hiccups in putting together the transaction, ranging from the founder turning temporarily non-responsive to investors changing their mind on their commitments, not to mention the founding team getting structured.

    Having been a long-time entrepreneur and angel investor, I should have taken these irritants in my stride, but got irritated and decided against investing, which is highly unusual for a deal lead.

    Needless to say, HealthifyMe went on to do very well after we decided not to invest. Subsequent rounds and valuations were stellar, and quite likely, this one investment could have returned my entire angel investment portfolio investment value to me. The funding was surely the boost the company needed as there was a 60-time increase in revenue between 2014 and 2018.

    One key lesson for us from this was to be more open to learning about ongoing trends and market future from entrepreneurs. Another lesson was that if we see a great team attacking a potentially huge opportunity with strong conviction, it’s not prudent to get too hung up on traction.

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    Published: 06 May 2019, 10:24 PM IST
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