According to IBEF, by 2022, the Indian healthcare market is expected to reach a market size of $133.44 billion.

In the last two years, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us started paying a lot more attention to our physical and mental wellbeing, keeping track of vitals such as oxygen level, heartbeat, blood pressure. An abnormal value in these levels is usually seen as a sign of disease.

And, This has been the case for ?GOQii?— a California, US-headquartered healthtech wearable device startup.

GOQii offers more than just smart wearable devices. Since its inception in 2014, the company has come a long way from offering a smart fitness band to a preventive healthcare application.

“For us, wearables are a gateway to preventive healthcare,” Vishal Gondal, Founder and CEO, GOQii Smart Healthcare, tells YourStory.

With its wearable devices, GOQii’s users can engage with doctors, coaches, and experts to adopt a healthy and active lifestyle. According to Vishal, this helps the company retain its users.

“Our consumers are looking for these health services. Our average user is more than 35 years. And, they're the ones who are engaging with us for a much longer time,” Vishal says

GOQii’s integrated system allows users to share their information, including vitals such as heart rate, ECG, temperature, SPO2 levels, etc., with their coaches and doctors, who guide them based on it.

For example, one of the early indicators of any illness is atypical levels of resting heart rate. Coaches and doctors take note of such data points before recommending treatments or diets.

Gamification on app

Vishal — who previously founded game development and publishing company Indiagames — has added a gamification layer to the GOQii app. Here, users, now players, can get a score for performing certain activities to promote movement and a healthy lifestyle during the day.

Vishal says, “In computer gaming, one of the things you learn is you need to reward people for everything.”

This score helps players earn GOQii cash — a virtual currency — which they can use to get discounts on GOQii’s ecommerce marketplace.

“We want everybody to be a player in the app. Because the idea is that you're playing the game of life, and you're all having different challenges And, everybody needs to become better by improving one percent every day,” says Vishal.