Anyone who has ever tried losing weight knows that calorie counting is hard, mundane work.
It’s that experience that led to the launch of Count’d, a healthy meal subscription app, this week. The app works by teaming up with restaurants and kitchens in the city to curate healthy, calorie-counted meal options. Brands on the app so far include Little Erth, Fitness Feedz and BR8 Kitchen.
Customers can subscribe to one, two or three healthy meals a day, with pre-scheduling possible for the week or month. The app automatically inputs calories, tracks your fitness journey, and suggests healthy meals depending on your requirements.
Count’d is the brainchild of long-term Dubai residents and friends Fadi Ghaly, Varun Kapur, and Ahmed Wasfie, who were looking for a way to revolutionise calorie-counting. Ghaly, the co-founder of Under500, a restaurant that offers meal and dessert options less than 500 calories, came up with the idea.
“I’ve always wanted to get into the meal subscription model. I’m a Fitbit user, and I found it a painful experience to manually input every calorie that’s consumed. That got me thinking: why not have an app that can provide the meal while automatically syncing calories consumed?”
It helps that many restaurants in the UAE already provide nutritional information about their dishes on menus. To ensure that the restaurants have their nutritional information listed correctly, Count’d audits all the recipes of restaurants it partners with. If a restaurant is not comfortable sharing their recipes, they get the recipes checked through a third party.
Users that sign up are asked a series of questions from their weight to fitness goals, and are then put on a plan that lists the calories required in a day. After filling out a section for allergies, they are recommended several meal plans such as balanced, low-carb, low-fat, vegan or keto.
The app takes choices into account and lists meals that are available, ensuring the calories add up to your daily requirement.
“There is a science to gaining or losing weight, and Count’d is basically a guide to that. It tracks your weight in the beginning, reminds you to stay hydrated and basically achieve your goal,” explains Ghaly.
Kapur, a venture capitalist, says it’s designed for busy, working professionals who don’t have the time to cook or even enter their calories manually on a daily basis. “There are a lot of fitness apps that require you to calculate that and it’s not sustainable. We’ve taken all that into account.”
The meals cost an average of Dh40 each, and residents are able to customise delivery time and location. There are more than 300 meals on the app so far, with the number growing.
Ghaly explains the app has benefits for the restaurants as well, thanks to the fact that orders have to be made the night before, with a cut-off of 10pm.
“We know that the pain point for restaurant operations is not knowing what orders they’re going to get in peak hours. Our main business operation is built around pre-scheduling. This allows restaurants to utlitise their kitchens during off peak hours.”
Kapur says they do not have high commissions or marketing fees, so that restaurants will work with them.
“The food delivery business is busy, but in the region it’s just getting started. Ordering through one’s mobile phone is starting to grow. And more than anything, people want to be healthy. That’s something that has really grown during the pandemic, health as a priority,” Kapur says.
It’s all part of their ultimate goal – to make “healthy eating easy”.
“The problem with a lot of the delivery apps these days is that you open them and you’re bombarded with pizzas and burgers and unhealthy food. You don’t know where to start,” Kapur says.
“We want people to hit their goals, be nutritionally content. It’s no secret that we have problems like obesity, diabetes ... a lot of that is because we don’t have time, it’s difficult, we’re good at procrastinating. Those are all barriers. We want to see a healthy population. We want to be a part of the movement that the UAE is taking so seriously.
While the app has launched only in Dubai (with an Abu Dhabi launch to happen soon), there are bigger plans on the table.
“We want to take over the UAE market, then expand to the GCC, Mena region and more. People are trying to get healthy and a healthy population is our overarching goal,” says Kapur.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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Specs
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Labour dispute
The insured employee may still file an ILOE claim even if a labour dispute is ongoing post termination, but the insurer may suspend or reject payment, until the courts resolve the dispute, especially if the reason for termination is contested. The outcome of the labour court proceedings can directly affect eligibility.
- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
The biog
Name: Mariam Ketait
Emirate: Dubai
Hobbies: I enjoy travelling, experiencing new things, painting, reading, flying, and the French language
Favourite quote: "Be the change you wish to see" - unknown
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
ESSENTIALS
The flights
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Islamophobia definition
A widely accepted definition was made by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in 2019: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” It further defines it as “inciting hatred or violence against Muslims”.
