Generative AI fashions have demonstrated to app builders that combining a strong information base with the appropriate mannequin can allow them to supply customers providers — as soon as reliant on expensive professionals like therapists or government assistants — at a fraction of the value. Former VP of product at health firm Whoop, Rami Alhamad, has the same tackle diet along with his new app Alma.
The iOS app, launching for customers in North America right now, is a well-designed app with a calorie tracker and a diet information with an AI layer on high of it.
Alhamad thinks that health apps like MyFitnessPal make diet monitoring tedious, with customers having to manually seek for dishes and enter them for several types of meals. As a substitute, he thinks it’s best to simply speak to (or kind to) Alma’s AI assistant about what you ate, and the app will work out the parts and calorie consumption by means of estimates. You may modify these measures after the app exhibits you calorie depend as nicely.
Alternatively, you’ll be able to take a photograph of your meal, and the AI algorithm will determine dishes for you. Such options are already out there in apps like Kholsa-backed Healthify and YC-backed Snapcalorie. Nonetheless, Alma is banking on its design, number of enter strategies, and ease of use as key drivers for development.
In addition to calorie monitoring, you’ll be able to ask the AI assistant to counsel meals to fulfill your objectives of fiber and protein consumption. Plus, you’ll be able to add a menu image and ask the AI assistant to advocate appropriate objects in keeping with your purpose.
The app additionally provides you a rating, which relies on what you ate on a selected day by way of energy and macros. The app makes use of that rating to offer you tips about enhancing your food regimen.
What’s extra, as you chat extra with the AI assistant within the app, it learns your preferences and offers you recommendations accordingly. You may see these insights in your profiles and edit them as nicely.
The corporate expects to generate profits by means of a month-to-month subscription of $19 or an annual subscription of $199.
The story behind Alma and future plans
Alhamad, who constructed a sports activities tech startup known as Push and finally bought it to Whoop, instructed TechCrunch he was pondering of doing one thing new within the space of well being and diet after exiting Whoop in 2022. Based on him, whereas there are trackers for exercises and sleep, there isn’t a sensible answer to monitoring diet.
“For the final 10 years of my life, I’ve always gained and misplaced weight. I’ve spent a very long time on apps like MyFitnessPal, typing stuff to trace my meals consumption. When ChatGPT got here round, similar to a whole lot of different individuals, I began utilizing it for meal planning and kitchen help. Nonetheless, it wasn’t customized. So final 12 months, after I left Whoop, I began desirous about this downside,” Alhamad mentioned.
Alhamad, who grew to become an entrepreneur in residence at Menlo Ventures to construct Alma, believes that within the shopper house, there will probably be specialised firms utilizing AI that target just one matter. The startup has raised $2.9 million from Menlo Ventures and Anthropic till now.
On the technical entrance, the corporate is utilizing a mixture of fashions to get outcomes. Alma famous that it’s utilizing information from Harvard Vitamin to fetch solutions. The corporate mentioned it has a number of individuals on workers specializing in dietary information to develop its knowledge set. Alhamad mentioned that the startup additionally needs to look past the U.S. to carry well being information from around the globe.
The Alma workforce want to construct on meals discovery within the app as nicely. At present, you’ll be able to ask for recipes and get solutions from the AI assistant, however you’ll be able to’t save them for future reference. The app needs to auto-populate meals recommendations based mostly in your objectives and preferences. Plus, it should even have a method to prepare dinner meals simply from what you’ve gotten within the pantry.
Chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude can already do a whole lot of these issues, however the friction for the person is that you must immediate them appropriately with context every time. Apps like Alma are attempting to remove the headache of writing lengthy prompts by means of app options. Samsung’s Meals app gained some options like pantry monitoring and recipe recommendations based on the items that you have in the house last year.
Shawn Carolan, a associate at Menlo VC, mentioned that ease of getting into your meals consumption makes Alma a lovely answer.
“If I eat 20 issues in a day, it’s powerful to file every one in all them by looking for them in an inventory. With Alma, you’ll be able to simply speak to it and register all of that rapidly. If one thing took you 30 seconds and a brand new app reduces that to just some seconds, it turns into a key utilization driver,” Carolan mentioned.
He added that proper now, loads of individuals are not consulting a nutritionist, and Alma can provide them easy accessibility to that type of info.
“Persons are spending 1000’s of {dollars} a month to get injections to drop some weight. So the query is, in the event you had this good nutritionist in your pocket who may enable you along with your purpose, perhaps you’ll be able to take a drug-free strategy to reaching your well being objectives,” Carolan mentioned.