FOXO Wants Every Indian to Be the CEO of

"I found people not getting answers for their lifestyle diseases from the healthcare ecosystem, which is built for acute cases like fever and trauma. If you have diabetes, the doctor gives you medicine. If you have gut issues, they say avoid spicy food. These are blanket statements that do not get to the root cause. That is where I saw the gap," Panigrahi says.

India is in the grip of a quiet health crisis that its healthcare system was not built to handle.

The country's elderly population of 153 Mn is expected to reach 347 Mn by 2050. Cancer cases among Indians are rising faster than the global average. More than a third of deaths in India are caused by cardiovascular disorders. Diabetes claims more lives in India than in any other country. And nearly half of India's 1.5 Bn population now actively prioritises longevity as a health goal.

The deeper problem is structural. India's healthcare ecosystem is optimised for acute care, treating symptoms when they become serious enough to require attention. Chronic lifestyle diseases do not fit that model. They build quietly over years, and by the time they surface, the window for easy intervention has often already closed.

FOXO, founded in Bengaluru by Panigrahi alongside co-founders Akash Gehani and Sanmaya Kumar Dhal, is built around a different premise entirely: that prevention, personalisation, and systems-level understanding of the body can keep people well before illness becomes the story.

"We use advanced science and systems to tell you what is happening inside your body and the probability of getting severe lifestyle diseases like heart attacks or diabetes in the next 5 to 10 years with 85 to 90% confidence. Our promise is to tell each customer where they stand and where they are heading," Panigrahi says.

The startup raised $0.5 Mn in a pre-seed round led by Blume Ventures in March 2025.

FOXO's flagship offering is a premium, membership-based platform that serves founders, senior executives, and operators: people with the means and the intent to treat their health as a long-term asset.

Flagship membership is priced at a few lakhs annually and includes a full battery of diagnostic tests on onboarding, a subset of tests repeated every three months to track biomarkers, weekly consultations with the clinical team, and access to the mobile app. Members are also expected to invest separately in a health-tracking wearable and fitness memberships.

"There are two yardsticks for our ideal customer. One is the ability to pay. The second is intent: someone who looks at health as an asset, rather than an expense, like those who buy organic food or use health wearables," Panigrahi explains.

The framing FOXO gives its members is deliberately empowering. "We tell our members that they are the CEO of their own health. We can only show them the path but they have to walk it. We bring in a board of mentors to guide them. And just like running a company, we set quarterly goals to help the member implement changes and address the issues in their body."

FOXO's clinical team is the backbone of its value proposition. It is deliberately cross-functional: doctors specialising in lifestyle diseases, biotechnology scholars with expertise in genomics and ageing, nutritionists, movement coaches, and behavioural and mindset instructors. All of them work together around each member's data.

The advice a member receives during their weekly consultation is personalised to their specific biomarkers and circumstances. Someone with gut or kidney issues may not be able to consume protein the same way as others. A frequent traveller may need guidance on maintaining a workout routine from a hotel room. A nutritionist may suggest recipes specifically tailored to the member's taste preferences alongside their health needs.

The mobile app reinforces this personalisation between consultations. It presents insights drawn from diagnostic tests and wearable data, includes photographic food logging to track diet, and assigns daily activities based on the member's personal goals, ranging from 15 minutes of sunlight exposure after waking up to avoiding screens before bed.

AI sits behind all of this, but deliberately out of view.

"In healthcare, it gets tricky if AI is exposed to the consumer because it runs the risk of hallucinations. We decided that AI should only be in the hands of an expert. AI is used to make our clinical team's life easier so that they have more time to spend with the members," Panigrahi says.

The company uses Claude and select open-source LLMs to help doctors analyse biomarkers and symptoms, generate automated food scores for nutritionist review, and extract action items from member consultations so the entire clinical team stays aligned across interactions.

FOXO currently has 50 Flagship members, ranging from people in their twenties to seniors above 60. Its next phase is focused on accessibility.

For less premium price points, the company has introduced a Primer membership at Rs 10,000, which includes the initial battery of tests and one doctor consultation. It is designed to give curious customers an entry point into the concept and a pathway to upgrading.

"In the next 12 to 18 months, we will experiment with different price points to make longevity and systems biology more accessible for the next 100 Mn Indians," Panigrahi says.

The company is also developing more specialised membership tracks differentiated by health focus rather than just price: programmes aimed at young professionals looking to optimise performance, people managing chronic conditions who want to reduce their dependence on medication, and specialised tracks for women's health and cancer survivors.

Globally, FOXO competes with brands like Next Health and Lucis. In India, its closest competitor is Rainmatter Capital-backed Biopeak.