Gabit: How Arpana Shahi is Building an AI-Powered Longevity Platform
From an AI-powered smart ring that tracks key health metrics to a platform that analyses over 150 biomarkers, Gabit, founded by Arpana Shahi and Gaurav Gupta, is building a preventive healthcare ecosystem that goes far beyond traditional fitness tracking.
Like many founders, Arpana Shahi realised during the COVID-19 pandemic that one of the biggest unsolved consumer challenges was healthcare. The founder of Gabit, an AI-powered wellness tech platform with a smart ring at its core, observed that most conversations and solutions were centred on treating illness rather than preventing it, leaving a significant gap in the preventive healthcare space.
“I realised how little I understood about my own health, despite being educated and aware,” she recalls. “My lean frame naturally responds to eating consciously. I always assumed that meant I was fit and healthy. But being lean and being fit and healthy are different things.”
Born and raised in Purnia, Bihar, Shahi completed her engineering degree at IIT Kharagpur and earned an MBA from IIM Calcutta. She joined consulting firm McKinsey before moving to Telenor’s Indian telecom venture. During maternity leave, she built SkillTap, a children’s learning venture, which she later sold. The pandemic, however, pushed her toward a bigger mission in healthcare.
The Four Pillars of Health
Shahi and her husband Gaurav Gupta, also an IIM Calcutta alumnus, spent two-and-a-half years researching what existed in the healthcare space. They consulted experts in India and internationally. Two insights stood out.
“First, health is interconnected across fitness, nutrition, sleep, and stress. Unless you address all four pillars, you can’t fully achieve a health goal,” Shahi explains. “That became our core thesis.”
The second insight was about human behaviour and friction. People are wired to repeat actions that give immediate rewards and avoid those that don’t, even if beneficial. This realisation shaped Gabit’s approach, making healthy habits easier through continuous tracking and insights.
The Gabit Smart Ring: Non-Intrusive Healthcare Companion
The Gabit Smart Ring became the centrepiece of this vision. Unlike bulky smartwatches, the lightweight ring (just three grams) is comfortable enough to wear 24/7, including during sleep and showers. It tracks key metrics with high accuracy, validated against gold-standard benchmarks.
For athletes, it offers on-demand VO₂ max tracking a key indicator of cardiovascular fitness and longevity. For beginners, it starts with sleep tracking and builds habits gradually. The device monitors sleep stages, recovery scores, and provides actionable insights through the app.
But Gabit is positioning itself as more than a wearable. The company is building a comprehensive longevity ecosystem in healthcare that tracks over 150 biomarkers through a suite of products and services, including a smart scale, blood tests, and a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). The AI-powered platform, Gabit One, brings together insights from these sources, identifies correlations, and provides personalised recommendations rather than isolated reports.
Making Healthcare Personal and Accessible
Gabit emphasises simplicity in healthcare. Instead of dense lab reports, the platform uses colour-coded indicators, reference ranges, and plain-language explanations. Users can interact with PEP, an AI-powered health coach, to ask questions or receive insights based on their data.
The company has paid special attention to women’s health features from day one, addressing skin health, hormone balance, and other areas often overlooked. Supplements and a longevity skincare line further support this holistic approach to healthcare.
Gabit’s users span ages 15 to 90, with a balanced gender split. While adoption started in metros, the platform now sees significant usage from smaller cities and towns, making advanced healthcare insights more accessible across India.
Challenges and Future Vision
Building a deeptech company in healthcare as a woman comes with unique challenges. Shahi notes that gender stereotypes often assume women handle branding or customer-facing roles rather than technology. Her engineering background helped her engage confidently on technical aspects.
Gabit has received strong early recognition, including Amazon India’s Best Smart Ring of the Year award. The company is focused on expanding its connected healthcare ecosystem as AI and longevity trends converge.
As consumers increasingly seek preventive healthcare solutions, Gabit aims to become the intelligent layer that helps individuals understand their bodies better and take proactive steps toward longer, healthier lives.
From personal health awakenings during the pandemic to building a comprehensive platform, Arpana Shahi’s journey with Gabit shows how deep technology, when combined with empathy and user-centric design, can transform healthcare in India and beyond.
The future of healthcare is shifting from reactive treatment to proactive prevention, and Gabit is helping lead that change, one smart insight at a time.