Innovation

By scanning product barcodes, users instantly access detailed insights into nutritional content, ingredient quality, and processing levels. TruthIn addresses a critical consumer need: navigating the often-misleading food labels and enabling better dietary decisions. Built in India, the app’s goal is to empower users to align their food choices with their health goals, creating a more health-conscious society.

The app’s proprietary algorithm evaluates products based on three key factors: nutritional profile, ingredient health impact, and processing levels. Unlike generic rating systems, TruthIn adapts to specific product categories and penalizes items with harmful additives, ensuring a more accurate assessment.It boasts special features like MatchMeter for dietary recommendations, and Shopping Cart Insights for smarter shopping, regarding individual health needs. With over 500,000 downloads and more than 85,000 active users monthly, TruthIn is making a difference in consumer awareness and attitude.

TruthIn promotes conscious eating against diet-related diseases and is in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as far as SDG 3 is concerned (good health and well-being).The app promotes products that are eco-friendly and aides sustainable practices in line with SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). Partnership agreements with the National Institute of Nutrition, India, and influencers like Foodpharmer exemplify TruthIn's allegiance to SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals), wherein joint action is catered toward health, transparency, and sustainability.

Inspiration

The inspiration behind TruthIn stems from a journey that has touched his co-founder Ravi Teja Putrevu deeply and personally. Diagnosed with acromegaly in 2022, a rare condition elevating his risk of diabetes and heart disease, Ravi was forced to scrutinize his dietary choices. However, as he did so, he became increasingly frustrated at the complexity and misleading nature of food labels, which often left one with almost no immediate choice but to cross the line of annoying their detailed reading.

With a desire to seek a solution, Ravi teamed up with Dr. Aman Basheer Sheikh-a dental surgeon driven by health and wellness-and cousin Raghav Putrevu, who is a seasoned technology consultant. Together they conceived of an app that could interpret these mystifying labels and inform consumers. They believed that the problem was that people didn’t know what’s in their food. Their mission was to educate and empower consumers.

The founders’ collaboration drew strength from their diverse expertise. While Ravi brought his personal insights, Dr. Aman identified gaps in India’s labeling standards compared to global practices, and Raghav contributed the technical foundation.

TruthIn was born out of this shared vision, combining technology, medicine, and personal experience to simplify food labeling and promote healthier living. This commitment to transparency and empowerment remains at the heart of their innovation.

Overall impact

TruthIn, co-founded by Ravi Teja Putrevu, Dr. Aman Basheer Sheikh, and Raghav Putrevu, was launched in July 2023 to change the way that food is labeled. It reveals the long, complicated ingredients in packaged food through AI-driven algorithms and a proprietary rating system, enabling consumers to make healthier dietary choices. The app derives from the co-founders' medical and technological backgrounds and ensuing public health issues each suffered through unfortunate circumstances. This new app crafts a design philosophy from the standpoint of transparency and education. Consumers scan a barcode, and they get the health ratings and insights into a number of food products instantaneously.

Reflecting in many ways, this app in the shorter term is said to have changed consumer habits. It is reported that with a user base of about 500,000 downloads each month, nutrition and health effects on packaged foods have become far more prominent in consumer consciousness-this has made their shopping trips much easier to avoid ultra-processed foods and other additives. Users say this app has made shopping easier for them to avoid ultra-processed products and other harmful additives with direct easy access to information since it has enabled them to practice mindful shopping and curtail the use of unhealthy products.

Over the long haul, the app is aimed to reduce non-communicable diseases from pollution by intelligent food choices among the consumers-the said health impacts from diet-altered conditions come within the domains of both diabetes and heart disease. Also, the promotion of eco-friendly and sustainable food labeling, through this app, falls in line with efforts being made currently around the world to encourage the quality of consumption. The growing user base and feedback from users-lauding the app for the big difference it has made in assisting their understanding of food labels and empowered them to make better judgment calls for themselves and families-testify to this.

Business benefit

TruthIn has already achieved scintillating milestones since it was founded by Ravi Teja Putrevu, Dr. Aman Basheer Sheikh, and Raghav Putrevu in July 2023. The app is meant to decode food labels and develop healthier eating habits. With over 0.5 million downloads, it boasts about 85,000-100,000 monthly active users. Its steady growth comes from the unique TruthIn rating system that assists consumers in analyzing food labels easily and a user-friendly interface that helps consumers make quick and informed decisions. TruthIn has been able to maintain accessibility with its free core product, allowing other premium features as well, thus bringing in a sustainable revenue model.

Building a unique tech stack and putting consumer trust as the central proposition paid off. The app's team grew to 35 members, with 15 duly qualified doctors and nutritionists in the form of advisory. Shared value of working for health and well-being goals has acted as a catalyst for employee retention along with a collaborative, purposeful culture.

Revant Himatsingka, popularly known as Foodpharmer, was appointed a brand ambassador-arguably the most significant strategic step in this plan. With Revant having a massive social media following, he resonates completely with TruthIn's goals of educating consumers about food labels; thus, he has used his platform to promote informed eating, which has started a movement to read and understand food labels. His credibility has helped to further the reach of TruthIn-to make it known and credible. Together they want to shift consumers paradigm of food-from passive shopping to informed choice.

Focusing on consumer empowerment and innovation has opened new doors for the B2B partnership landscape. TruthIn is conversing with Amazon, Blinkit, and Swiggy to deploy the technology that will assist in compliance and product filtration. The increased public awareness contributed to the interest from potential investors and collaborators, fostering progress towards extending product lines in personal care and nutraceuticals. These strategic pathways tell well how TruthIn is in a position to create value through long-term growth and trigger.

Social and environmental benefit

The app gives a direct and clean format to the consumer for understanding the nutritional value, ingredient quality, and various levels of food processing of packaged foods allowing them to make better choices in their diet. The TruthIn Rating System is the proprietary rating that allows users to close the knowledge gap; from thereon making healthier choices almost effortless. In effect, this concept helps public health to make better food choices and ultimately lessen huge cases of diet-related diseases namely such as diabetes, heart diseases, and obesity.

Beyond individual health, TruthIn carries a much broader social implication. It builds nutritional literacy to inform users more effectively about what they eat and why this is important. This app will assist in the transition from mindless eating to conscious eating. Thus, the shift the app promotes will elicit more and better demands for transparency in food from the side of the manufacturers. An increase in consumer demand allows the food industry to have better and cleaner labels and reduce harmful additives ultimately benefiting society at large. TruthIn, from an environmental point of view, embraces the sustainability targets by teaching its users about ecological balance in food packaging. While encouraging responsible consumption through eco-friendly products and sustainable practices, the application promotes a further step in user cultivation to choose reduced environmental footprint products. Combining health and sustainability, TruthIn embodies the very purpose of long-term social and environmental transformation for enhancing people's lives and improving the living environment. 

Interview

Ravi Teja Putrevu, Co-Founder