Akshaya Shanmugam, the CEO of lumme Inc. has made it to the list of innovators and entrepreneurs in the Forbes’ ’30 under 30′ list in the area of healthcare. This is the second consecutive year a Chennai native has made it to the prestigious list. Last year 27-year-old Vivek Kopparthi had made it to the list for his contributions towards neo-natal care technology.

Ms.Shanmugam’s Lumme Inc. is cracking the code to beat addictive behaviour by combining wearable technology, machine learning, and behavioural psychology.

The 29 year old Shanmugam is an alum of Chettinad Vidyashram where she completed her schooling before pursuing engineering at Meenakshi Sundararajan Engineering College. She moved to the US in 2009 to do her PhD in an area that involves developing health monitoring systems outside hospitals.

It’s during her PhD days she met Abhinav Parate who was working on a thesis with wearables. Shanmugam joined hands with  Parate and a few professors and set up Lumme to solve the global addiction problem.

“Our platform automatically detects addictive behaviour, predicts indulgence in addictive behaviour, and prevents it by delivering clinically validated interventions. It also helps individuals gain better insights into their daily life and helps them understand the why, how, and what surrounding their lifestyle choices,”  Shanmugam told the Times of India.

The product is expected to be launched in 2018 after the technology is clinically validated.

The users would be wearing the smart watches and going on their normal routine. The wearable tracks the users smoking behaviour and pattern and predicts the next time the user is likely to smoke next and sends an alert 6 minutes before they are about to light the cigarette.