Why is there a shoe size and a shirt size, but no size for what and how much we eat? Tanveer Singh asked that question and built a company around it.
In this episode of The Builders Club Startup Founders Podcast, the three-time founder of Sova Health explains the precision nutrition startup model, how he got there from retail and hospitality, and what he would tell first-time founders.
What is precision nutrition? Tanveer Singh’s core thesis at Sova Health
Tanveer describes precision nutrition as science-backed, data-backed and evidence-based eating advice tailored to the individual. Sova Health aims to prevent and manage lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, thyroid problems, hypertension and obesity by combining lifestyle inputs with blood analysis.
His core claim is that weight is a symptom, not the cause. Find the underlying cause, and recommendations on food, supplements and lifestyle can be precise instead of trial and error.
- Personalise, do not generalise. Generic diets conflict; individual data cuts through the noise.
- Prevention first. He says such diseases often show signs 10 to 20 years before diagnosis.
- Prove it before you build it. Sova served customers manually for its first year before building an app.
- Team above all. He calls the right co-founders and early team a make-or-break factor.
Who is Tanveer Singh and how did he get to Sova Health?
Tanveer grew up in Bhubaneswar, studied in Dehradun and at Delhi University, and played tennis at national level. While in college he started a small social media consulting company around 2010, when brands were first moving online.
He then joined Juvalia as an early employee and saw it grow to about 200 people across 40 cities and over 100 crore in annual turnover. In 2015 he founded Efficient Bazaar, a B2B procurement platform for hotels, restaurants and catering.
How did Sova start?
In 2018 he went to Berlin for a design thinking programme and met his co-founder Max, who has a genetics background. They spent six months mapping about 20 user journeys with different people, then picked the problems they wanted to solve.
- Insight: plenty of generic health options exist, but none tells you what is right for you.
- Aim: bring science and data to help health professionals decide better.
How does Sova Health’s platform work?
The recommendation engine takes lifestyle data such as sleep, exercise, medical conditions and eating preferences, plus habits such as when and how you eat. It combines these with blood analysis to produce recommendations on food, supplements and lifestyle changes.
Sova is building its own data libraries because, he says, most global libraries are built for Caucasian populations and do not reflect Indian or Asian metabolism. The team collects 1,500 to 2,500 data points per user over 90 days.
- Collect lifestyle and habit data.
- Add blood biomarker analysis.
- Run a root-cause analysis with the engine and a health professional.
- Recommend food, supplements and lifestyle changes.
Is precision nutrition just a weight loss programme?
Tanveer says no. Weight loss is an outcome of becoming healthier, and the yo-yo pattern appears when diets are trial and error. Sova looks for what is wrong in the 30 percent of habits a person gets wrong, not a life overhaul.
He added that some clients are actually told to eat more. In his view the competition includes weight loss apps, diabetes management companies and the offline nutritionist, but the real work is educating customers on a different category.
- Do not starve; fix the specific things that are off.
- Position around prevention of lifestyle disease rather than six-pack promises.
- Mind how customers perceive you, not only how competitors position themselves.
How should an early-stage startup validate before building an app?
Sova spent its first year proving that the method worked, delivering through whatever channel was practical. Only after its second funding round did it begin moving from closed beta to direct customer signups, starting with a web app instead of native apps.
Tanveer called many app features vanity metrics. His point was that if the outcome is delivered, customers do not care about the format.
- Define the checkboxes you want to tick before spending.
- Prove results with a small batch of customers.
- Build the simplest version that delivers the promise.
How do you find the right co-founder and raise money?
Tanveer said co-founder dependency is a feature, not a flaw: a startup is a lonely journey and you will spend more time with your co-founder than with most people. For founders who cannot find one, he suggested accelerators and programmes where like-minded builders meet, and writing down the traits you need.
On funding, he said collateral is not something venture investors ask for. A 40 to 50 lakh seed ticket suits angels or micro VCs. He advised building a target list of investors relevant to your space, getting warm introductions and planning for a six to nine month fundraise.
- Write down what you need in a co-founder before you start looking.
- Pick investors by value-add and portfolio fit, not by label.
- Remember that investors get paid to listen, while you are paid to build.
What mindset advice does he give first-time founders?
He gave three points. Get the right team, commit to at least five years mentally, and build something you genuinely believe in instead of copying a Western success.
He also noted that he built Sova as a fully remote company during the pandemic, at one point with 12 employees in 12 cities. On exits, he said an exit-focused mindset is fine, but expect five to ten years of work and treat any acquisition, IPO or shutdown as possible.
- Do not treat a startup as a six-month experiment.
- Fundraising is a means, not the goal.
- Hiring is selling: excite people about the vision.
Further reading and sources
- Nutrigenomics (Wikipedia)
- Lifestyle disease (Wikipedia)
- Design thinking (Wikipedia)
- Venture capital (Wikipedia)
Frequently asked questions
What is precision nutrition?
Precision nutrition means giving food and supplement advice based on an individual’s own data, such as lifestyle, habits and blood biomarkers, instead of generic diet rules. Tanveer Singh describes it as science-backed, data-backed and evidence-based. The aim is to prevent and manage lifestyle diseases, not only to lose weight.
How long does a startup fundraise take?
Tanveer advises planning for six to nine months when raising institutional capital, even if an optimistic round might close in about three. Build a target list of relevant investors and use warm introductions. Cold outreach rarely works.
Do venture capitalists ask founders for personal collateral?
According to Tanveer, no. Asking for collateral is how bank debt works, and it is very rare in equity investing. If an equity investor asks for it, he suggests being cautious.
Conclusion
Tanveer Singh’s story links three industries through one habit: use technology to fix what is inefficient, and prove the model before polishing it. At Sova Health that means personalised, data-backed nutrition aimed at prevention.
If you are starting up, pick your team carefully, commit for the long haul and test the outcome with a small set of real customers first.
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