When Napala Pratini and Ian Braithwaite met at Counterweight, a diabetes reversal research company, they had no idea that their coworker relationship would turn into a co-founder one. But after seeing that the life-changing diabetes reversal programmes available in research trials were not scaling quickly enough to meet market demand, they put their heads together to co-found Habitual. Habitual provides a unique combination of digital therapeutics and nutritional treatment that reverses and prevents chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes. We are thrilled to back Ian and Napala alongside MMC Ventures in their £325k pre-seed round. We backed the Habitual team because we believe in their vision of not just preventing, but also reversing, chronic disease by putting patients at the centre of the healthcare ecosystem. Recently, we had the chance to speak with Napala and Ian to learn more about Habitual’s journey to-date and the team’s vision moving forward.

Tell me a little bit more about Habitual.

Ian: Habitual is a digital diabetes prevention and reversal company, and we’re on a mission to reverse type 2 diabetes for as many patients as possible. We do it by combining two things. The first is a nutritional treatment called total diet replacement, which helps people to lose 15 kilograms safely, quickly, and reliably. This is a key number because the evidence shows that to reverse type 2 diabetes, patients need to lose about 15kg. That level of weight loss allows the pancreas to start functioning normally again—and thus reverses type 2 (Read more...)