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

Men’s Health in the wellness market
Men’s health has traditionally been ignored around the world as well as in India. But then there is no awareness and it has accelerated in the last few years abroad. And we can also see the change in India, probably because of the millennial mindset and people willing to talk about their issues and the drive to improve and improve their quality of life has probably added to this market growth. human health and well-being. So, over the past two or three years, the men’s health and wellness industry in India has experienced significant growth of around 16-17% CAGR.

Impact of Covid-19 on the wellness market
There has been a significant shift between the pre-pandemic era and the pandemic era. There was not much interest or awareness for a person’s personal health or well-being. But once the pandemic hit us and we were taken by surprise, we realized we didn’t have any medicine or we didn’t have a vaccine. At this point, the focus is on everyone, starting with the healthcare industry, as well as an individual who is more focused on how to stop myself from getting this or get better faster. and with so much information on how to stay healthy, how to avoid infections, and how to recover faster.

Now everyone is aware and more aware of their health and well-being. Now, before, who knew what zinc was? Who knew if vitamin C and vitamin D would help us recover faster? Now if you ask someone now, are we so aware of things like foods that boost the immune system and how can we stay healthier? And how does a little activity help us? Why it’s important to sleep better and how it helps with immunity and other things. Today, the word immunity has gained so much importance that globally, the growth rate of all of these immune-boosting foods has increased by 40% over the past one and a half to two years.

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

Doctor at Docpreneur
In 2020, I was associated with hospitals. I ran a 1,000-bed Yashoda hospital, which is a corporate hospital chain in Telangana. So when we had this Covid initially, we were able to see the amount of panic people were facing even when they had minor symptoms.

They were rushing to the hospital, they ran out of beds. There were not enough nurses and paramedics and even the test kits for Covid were not available at that time with the blockages it was so difficult with the logistics to get the PPA kits. So when we saw all this panic among people who made me think of myself and a group of doctors who are always interested in preventive health versus curative health, you can still prevent it. So with that in mind and with the experience of the last 25 to 30 years that we have in the healthcare industry, we all thought, why not?

We got together and do something that works more towards preventive health and educates people and gives answers to improve their quality of life, their immune status and something that would help them not to get sick.

ForMen and ForKids Supplements
We wanted to focus more on the well-being of men and children for several reasons. See now with this team of doctors and experts and pharmaceutical experts that we collectively had, we were a team from across the country. So, we have had the experience of more than a lakh of patients for so many years. So what we had gained and what we had seen was that there is some inhibition for men to talk about their issues.

Anyway, you will come to the hospital and meet a doctor. But then for simple problems that ruin your quality of life, that make you miserable, which also negatively affects your family. Like say, for example, sleep problems. I can’t imagine a man just going to tell a doctor that I can’t sleep well, do something about it, or have performance issues on and off. I am not able to have a child or I continue to get sick. So, those issues, which they were not very open to talking about and which could be easily dealt with and which negatively impacted on the rest of the family, which affected their quality of life, also leading very negatively to unhappiness which they refused. to talk About. We wanted to tackle this hidden problem and come to the children, well, as a mother myself, we do our best to give our children all that we can. But then, in the current scenario, with both working parents and even the quality of things we can get and give our kids and nuclear families less family support, which is not in a position to be. ‘do enough.

When it comes to nutrition, even children from wealthy families develop vitamin deficiencies. So a lot of input was given by pediatricians all over the country, they said the parents brought their kids saying the kid is so restless, the kid is not able to concentrate, you work the child. He suffers from a magnesium deficiency. He was a child from a wealthy family who had enough money to eat. But then the child has a magnesium deficiency or there is growth retardation. My child keeps saying that he hurts or falls frequently. So we wanted to create a platform that parents could trust, a platform of doctors who would give expert advice, that a parent can trust blindly without having to do their homework.

Formulation and ingredient challenges
We had quite a few challenges. We had the medical knowledge. We had the expertise. We knew which formulation would work. One of the first challenges when we came out when we formulated a product and then wanted someone to make it. Most of the manufacturing plants had their own fixed formulations, which were made by we don’t know by whom, and the quality of the ingredients they used were pretty bad as well. Just to give you an example, we wanted to make 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 absorbed by 4% in the body. So if I gave them 100 milligrams of magnesium, four milligrams would be useless in their body. It is a waste. And then it added to the metallic taste. So we had to look for these manufacturers, these ingredient suppliers and these partners who were as concerned about quality and purity as we are.

I had to find someone who was willing to give me Bishofite Magnesium Salt, or who wanted to give me Zinc Picolinate Salt. So that quality kind of guy was a little hard to find. But then we did our research and finally we were able to involve everyone, whether it was the branding, the packaging, the sourcing of the ingredients. It was a manufacturing facility, they had all the certifications we wanted, and they were willing to do it in the dosages we wanted.

We had so many products. We had analyzed a lot of products and then we saw that they said it was a multivitamin candy. There were only four vitamins at very low doses. We follow the ICMR table which is given for Indians. The requirement for Indians is different from the requirement for Americans.

Healthy Medtech Platform
So we have the online platform for men. It’s ForMen.Health and for kids it’s getforkids.com, so you can log into the website. And then we have all the products on display.

And then we also have a blog section. Which is very important and which is much appreciated. Here we provide information and educate people on the issues they face and the products as well as each ingredient. So once you want a product, once you click on it, all the information about the product is given like what is in it, what are the exact proportions of the ingredients, and what does each ingredient do and about the dosages? And if so, if there are any side effects, what are the possible side effects and what precautions should be taken, the ideal time to consume the products, etc.

Healthy medical technologies: future plans
Now in the future, we plan to expand the products as well as the categories. Our main goal will be to solve the problems people face with regards to their health and well-being. So we’ll go that way. Our primary motivation is to improve people’s health. And then, as I said, we always focus on preventative health and improving the quality of life for Indians. So not only will we be doing this product expansion and category expansion, but we will also like to explore international markets very soon.