In a fast-paced corporate world where the boundaries between work and personal life often blurs, the importance of self-care usually takes a back seat. But, this women-led tech startup is determined to change this. By leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI), this startup is inspiring people to take better care of themselves.
Brazil-based startup RadarFit, focused on providing a comprehensive health and wellness programme to corporate customers, personalises physical and mental health wellness experiences through its generative AI-powered app.
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Launched in 2020 by a trio of female entrepreneurs, the startup has already gathered over one million users with a unique gamification strategy designed to incentivise healthy habits. The app, powered by the Microsoft Cloud, runs on Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service and uses Microsoft Copilot Studio to automate marketing and analyse data and user feedback.
“For companies, we solve the problem of high costs from employee health problems and having to invest a lot in health benefits,” Chief Executive Officer Jade Utsch Filizzola, said in a blogpost.
According to Filizzola, the root cause of the difficulty of achieving a healthy life is the lack of immediate results.
“Even if a person puts in 60 minutes of exercise or eats a healthy meal, they don’t instantly get the health and body they want. This lack of immediate reward is what triggers the lack of motivation,” she said.
How does the app work?
The app, RadarFit, uses generative AI, combined with a points system, to encourage healthier choices. Anonymised user data captured from the uploaded images of meals and other activities is used to generate “tags” – or labels – that generate personalised recommendations based on each healthy habit registered by users.
An avatar, which learns from user input, suggests meals and physical activities tailored to individual health goals. Points earned for healthy choices can be exchanged for donations to social or environmental causes or redeemed for products such as appliances and electronics, the company explained.
Further, the company mentioned that different point categories recognise that some tasks are more difficult than others. For example, a 15-minute workout earns 3 points, while a 60-minute or longer workout can be worth 9 points. A balanced meal is worth 31 points, emphasizing the importance of healthy eating. Meanwhile, simpler tasks like drinking a glass of water are worth 5 points.
The app also lets users track their progress compared to colleagues, the kind of friendly competition that research has shown can act as a further spur to action. Users can also opt out of company competitions, the startup mentioned.
By uploading images of healthy meals, users can earn points that can be exchanged for prizes. The AI reviews the photos, with human subject-matter experts from RadarFit supervising the review process.
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Tatiany Duarte, the chief technology officer of RadarFit, claimed that gamification and generative AI together transform tedious tasks into enjoyable and interesting ones. She said that it “makes it much more playful”.
The three women mentioned that the original idea for RadarFit came from their own struggles to find time to take care of themselves while also building a business.
In November 2023, the tech startup received over 2.5 million reais (currency of Brazil) from WE Ventures (roughly equivalent to about $456,000). The startup invested the capital to enhance functionality and accelerate expansion outside Brazil.
With the help of Azure OpenAI Studio and Copilot Studio, RadarFit has also added a guided meditation feature. This feature is designed to alleviate fatigue, stress, and insomnia by encouraging users to take a break for breathing exercises or reciting mantras to calm their minds.