Healthtech Startup Nintee Shuts Down after Launching in 2022

Nintee, backed by PeakXV, Kunal Shah and other angel investors had raised $3 million in seed funding in April 2023.

US-based digital health startup Nintee is ceasing operations and plans to return the remaining capital funds to its investors in the next few weeks.

In an announcement on its website, Nintee cofounder and CEO Paras Chopra cited scalability and customer acquisition related issues for the decision to shut down operations.

As per Tracxn data, Nintee, backed by PeakXV, Kunal Shah and other angel investors, had raised seed funding of $3 million in April 2023. Chopra thanked the investors for supporting the business idea.

“The majority of funding we raised is still remaining, and over the next few weeks, we will return it,” he said in a statement.

What Led to This Closure

Nintee, a digital health app was launched with the aim of helping people build better habits through gamification.

Chopra said while they identified a niche, scaling became a challenge. “Our original hypothesis was to use Al for helping people build better habits to transform their lives. This attracted a passionate niche, but we couldn’t build conviction that it could be a VC-scale business,” he added.

“We tried another pivot to explore education and learning related ideas, but quickly discovered that building a successful consumer app today is very hard (as you're battling for attention with YouTube, Instagram, and Fortnite),” Chopra explained further.

As a result of the decision, Nintee has fired all its employees. However, the number of employees impacted is not yet known. In the announcement, Chopra said that all the employees losing their jobs have been paid severance pay for four months.

The employees are also being given an open offer to join Chopra’s other company VWO, a connected product platform, at the same salary.

Speaking about his next course of action, Chopra said, “As for me, there’s no dearth of ideas. I love building things and would continue to do so.”

Funding Winter or Scalability Issue?

Several Indian startups have closed operations in the last two years due to the ongoing funding winter. Besides, economic realities have led to investors tightening their budgets.

Examples are plenty. In 2023, Kalaari capital backed digital health startup ConnectedH closed down. The healthcare delivery platform said, while it served over 5 Lakh patients over the course of five years, it ran into certain “market realities” which couldn't be changed with the available resources.

To fight the funding winter several startups are resorting to layoffs. Recently, Healthify, formerly known as HealthifyMe, laid off around 150 employees, or about 27% of its workforce, in a restructuring exercise. The layoff majorly affected employees from sales and product teams.

However, given Nintee’s $3 million fund acquisition and the founder’s comments on the scalability issue, it looks like the startup’s business model which once looked sound, lost relevance now impacting the scalability factor.