‘150 Food Delivery Apps Died, Two Survived’ — Gabit's Founder & CEO Thinks Smart Rings Will Go the Same Way

The smart ring market in India is getting crowded fast. Oura entered India in March 2026 with the Ring 4 (Review) starting at Rs 28,900. Samsung has the Galaxy Ring, Noise is pushing its Luna Ring below Rs 20,000. And Ultrahuman, the Bengaluru-based rival that once championed "no subscription ever," just introduced a paid tier with its new Ring Pro. On paper, it looks like a bloodbath waiting to happen.

Gaurav Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Gabit, has seen this movie before - and he's suggesting it ends the same way.

"When we were building food delivery at Zomato, we were the last ones to start. There were 150 food delivery companies. Today, two of them dominate because they out-executed everyone," Gupta told Gizbot in an exclusive interaction. "Here also, when Gabit started, there were other players who were market leaders. We started two years back. And today, we got the best smart ring of the year award by Amazon in 2025, and last month by NDTV Gadgets 360 for 2026."

The confidence isn't unfounded. But the more interesting claim Gupta makes is about the market itself.

That 30% Decline? It's Not What You Think

IDC data showed that smart ring shipments in India fell 30.6% in 2025, a number that paints a bleak picture for the category. But Gupta offers a sharply different reading of the same data.

"Two things happened in that period. One, there was a brand offering a very cheap alternative to smart rings, which almost stopped operating in this vertical. And secondly, some very expensive players also had some degrowth," he said. "I can give you context that in the same time period, Gabit actually grew over 150%, if not more."

His argument is that the headline decline masks a market that's consolidating around serious players rather than actually shrinking. The cheap brand exits dragged volumes down, while premium players who couldn't justify their price point against newer, more aggressive entrants like Gabit lost ground too.

It's a founder's interpretation, sure. But the growth in numbers, investor backing from Deepinder Goyal and Kunal Shah, the Ranbir Kapoor brand ambassadorship, and the fact that Gabit's user base now spans ages 14 to 93 across tier two, three, and four towns - all of that suggests the growth claim has some substance behind it. At least, for now.

The Ecosystem Play Nobody Else Is Running

What separates the conversation around Gabit from, say, Oura or Ultrahuman is that Gupta refuses to let the discussion stay on hardware. The smart ring, he insists, is just the entry point.

"Customers are not looking for data, customers are looking for health outcomes. That's why Gabit is designed to be an ecosystem," he said. "On Gabit today, you can track 150 markers. You've got the smart ring, blood tests that you can book on Gabit, CGM through a partnership with Abbott, and a smart scale for body composition. All this data in one place, because it's very connected."

The AI layer on top of this is where it gets genuinely interesting. Gupta shared a personal example of what their engine, Gabit One, surfaced from his own data - it correlated an increase in workouts, a dramatic reduction in carbs, and a stress signal on his pancreas from a blood report. The kind of cross-domain correlation that no single device or app can deliver in isolation.

And then there's PEP, their AI health coach that lives inside the app. Users can talk to it to understand any metric, get guidance on what to do next, and even log food through voice in Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, English - whatever language is natural to them.

"We'll Tell You to Stop Buying Our Supplements If They Don't Work"

Perhaps the boldest claim Gupta made in the entire conversation was around Näck, the Swedish nutrition brand Gabit acquired in late 2025. The obvious conflict-of-interest question - a tracking company recommending its own supplements - didn't faze him. In fact, he leaned into it.

"If it's not working for them, it's not worth the money, then we should tell them. Please stop using it. That's the kind of objective model we've built," he said.

He backed this with a personal anecdote that landed harder than any pitch deck could. "When I took Vitamin D, although it was low initially, once I started supplementing and tracking it, it turned out to be at toxic levels because my absorption is very high. I had to modulate the doses based on that."

The thesis is straightforward - supplementation without tracking is guesswork, and Gabit is the only platform where you can see whether what you're consuming is actually moving your health markers. Näck's products carry Informed Choice certification, meaning every batch is tested against 250-plus banned substances, and one of their flagship products, Astaxanthin, has 75-plus clinical trials backing it.

When pushed on whether clean Swedish supplements can resonate in a market deeply rooted in Ayurvedic wellness, Gupta didn't position Näck as an alternative to tradition. "If Ayurvedic ingredients are good for supplements, we'll do that. We're working on a women's health supplement using Ashwagandha and Shatavari. For gut health, we're using turmeric and ginger along with other ingredients," he said. "Whatever makes sense for our customers, we'll do that."

The Apple Watch Problem Nobody Talks About

Gupta also made a surprisingly effective case against smartwatches as health trackers, and it starts with a question most watch users will find uncomfortably familiar - do you sleep wearing your watch?

"Either you charge it at night because you want to use it in the morning, or most people are just uncomfortable with a band or watch on their hand while sleeping. And sleep is the most legit performance-enhancing drug," he said.

But the argument goes deeper than comfort. On a watch, the sensor sits on top of the wrist while the blood vessels the sensor needs to read are on the underside. "Imagine all that light has to go through all this noise of tissue, bones, all of that. In a ring, the data is here and the sensor is here. There are scientific papers which tell you that rings are more accurate than watches."

Add 10-day battery life to that equation, and the charging anxiety that every Apple Watch or Galaxy Watch user has lived through simply disappears.

"Electronics Companies Can't Solve Health"

The sharpest line of the conversation came when the discussion turned to Fitbit's decline and subsequent Google acquisition. Gupta didn't mince words.

"I fundamentally believe there's a core difference between electronics companies and health companies trying to solve health. The focus, the rigour of building the right algorithms, especially relevant for the Indian market, matters a lot."

It's a pointed dig at the Samsungs and Apples of the world, and even at companies like Noise, which approach health tracking as a feature layer on consumer electronics rather than a foundational mission. Whether Gabit can deliver on that distinction at scale is the open question, but Gupta's conviction - and his Zomato-forged belief that execution eats market positioning for breakfast - is hard to dismiss.

The preventive health market in India is heading towards $530 billion by 2030, by his numbers. Gabit is betting that the 150 to 200 million health-conscious Indians who woke up during COVID aren't going back to sleep. Given that one of those converts is his own mother - "She doesn't want a bad sleep score in the morning. Sleeps on time, makes my dad sleep on time, doesn't watch TV. If anybody would have preached her all of this, she wouldn't have made any of these changes" - the bet feels personal as much as it feels commercial.

And if the food delivery wars taught him anything, it's that the ring on your finger matters less than the team behind it.