Skip to main content

Fitness Wearable And Coaching Startup GOQii Lands $13.4M Series A From NEA And Cheetah Mobile


Wearable fitness trackers are becoming increasingly popular, but a lot of them are quickly abandoned after the novelty of tracking exercise and sleep wears off. GOQii, however, believes it has landed on the winning formula for long-term success. The Menlo Park, California and Mumbai-based company just raised a $13.4 million Series A, which it will use to expand in the U.S. and China.
Co-founder and chief executive officer Vishal Gondal says the company is already the leading fitness tracker company in India and wants to hit one million users there as soon as possible.
GOQii sells its own fitness trackers, but its main focus is a cloud-based platform that sends data to real coaches, who then provide feedback to help users meet their health goals. Subscriptions come with a free wristband, but the platform is also compatible with most major brands, including Fitbit, Jawbone, and Misfit.
The company’s Series A was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from Cheetah Mobile; Great Wall Club (GWC); DSG Consumer Partners; Supercell co-founder and chief executive officer Ilkka Paananen; angel investor Pravin Gandhi; and Gondal.
Gondal says that the addition of Cheetah Mobile, the Beijing-based mobile developer best known for Android utility apps like Clean Master, and GWC, a mobile company network that hosts the Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC), will help it gain market share in China.
Xiaomi founder Lei Jun is also Cheetah Mobile’s chairman, but Gondal says GOQii will pursue partnerships with a wide array of Chinese companies in addition to the Mi smartphone maker.
Recent research from the International Data Corporation that says shipments of wearable devices will increase to 76.1 million units this year, a 163.9 percent jump from the to 28.9 million shipped in 2014. That figure is expected to hit 173.4 million units by 2019.
FitBit and Xiaomi are emerging as the main contenders for the high and low ends, respectively, of the fitness tracker market, however, and as recent layoffs at Jawbone underscore, the market may become increasingly competitive and difficult for smaller players.
Gondal claims GOQii’s coaching platform will give it an edge, especially since it is compatible with over 35 fitness tracker brands.
“We believe that there is an inherent flaw in the wearable market. They are trying to sell you a piece of hardware, which most people stop using in a matter of weeks or months. But GOQii flips that,” he says. “Most people have all the data they need about their health and fitness, but they don’t know what it means and that is how our coaches help them.”
Each coach welcomes users by setting up an audio or video call and then continues to give them feedback every day based on their goals (for example, losing weight or running a marathon). While the process is relatively labor-intensive, Gondal says GOQii’s platform streamlines it by using big data analytics to help coaches deliver personalized advice. Most worked with about five or 10 clients every day, but GOQii’s platform allows them to handle up to 60 to 70 users each day.
GOQii hasn’t disclosed its user metrics, but Gondal says its coaching platform enjoys strong engagement rates. The company launched its U.S. beta program in January and plans to open it to the public by the first quarter of next year.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Here Are The First Connected Home Devices For Apple’s HomeKit

Apple’s HomeKit is finally starting to roll out to actual consumers, via the first crop of HomeKit-enabled accessories from third-party manufacturers. This means you’ll soon be able to get your hands on a range of products for the connected home that work with Siri on your iOS device, and that you’ll be able to do so as soon as today, since some of the new HomeKit accessories start shipping now. The accessories in question range from sensors, to lights, to thermostats, to smart outlets, and come from a group of accessory-makers with a trusted reputation in the connected home industry. HomeKit may have taken a while to arrive, but it’s doing so in grand fashion, with a practical lineup to get your home connected to your iOS ecosystem in an essential way. Elgato Eve The  Elgato Eve  is a set of connected wireless sensors that monitor key factors like indoor air quality, temperature, humidity as well as conditions outside, like temperature, humidity and air pre...

Google is using machine learning to teach robots how to grasp random objects

Using your hand to grasp a pen that’s lying on your desk doesn’t exactly feel like a chore, but for robots, that’s still a really hard thing to do. So to teach robots how to better grasp random objects, Google’s research team  dedicated 14 robots to the task . The standard way to solve this problem would be for the robot to survey the environment, create a plan for how to grasp the object, then execute on it. In the real world, though, lots of things can change between formulating that plan and executing on it. Google is now using these robots to train a deep  convolutional neural network  (a technique that’s all the rage in machine learning right now) to help its robots predict the outcome of their grasps based on the camera input and motor commands. It’s basically hand-eye coordination for robots. The team says that it took about 3,000 hours of practice (and 800,000 grasp attempts) before it saw “the beginnings of intelligent reacti...

eGym raises $45M Series C for cloud-connected gym equipment and fitness software

eGym , the Munich-based startup that offers cloud-connected gym equipment and supporting cloud software and app for the fitness training floor, has closed $45 million in Series C funding. The round was led by new investor HPE Growth Capital, while existing investors, including Highland Europe, also participated. The problem that eGym is looking to solve is that, whilst gyms have moved from a bodybuilder market to a mass market in the last 20 years, the technology in gyms lags behind. That’s despite the fact that better use of technology can help to reduce customer churn, the biggest pain-point of both gym operator and gym users. Comprising of an app for both gym user and trainer, combined with the company’s connected strength machines, the eGym Cloud makes it possible for gym members to receive better fitness instruction and an evolving and personalised fitness plan based on data collected as they workout. And by providing a better workout feedback loop, gym goers can get an i...

Amazon Is Giving Away Unlimited Cloud Storage For $5.00

Amid a slew of deep discounts appearing on the web today as a part of the shopping holiday Black Friday, Amazon has introduced one deal that’s sort of a no brainer. The company is  giving away unlimited online storage  on its cloud servers for just five dollars. The normal price for this is $60 per year, so this – 92% off – represents a significant savings. The deal is aimed at promoting  Amazon’s Cloud Drive service  – an online storage site that competes with similar services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft’s OneDrive, and more. Cloud Drive allows you to store documents, music, photos, videos and other files in the cloud, which you can access from any web-connected device, including smartphones and tablets by way of Amazon’s Cloud Drive mobile applications. However, be aware that if you’re planning to use the now $5 service primarily for photo backups, you may already have that option enabled. Amazon Prime currently offers free, unlimited pho...

Windows 7 and 8.1 Update to Windows 10 automatically

Windows 10 downloader While it might be a bit too early to start getting excited over the  Windows 10 update , which isn't expected to arrive until summer, Microsoft seems to already be warming up people's computers just the same. A recommended, and therefore purely optional, update for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows 8.1 has been discovered to be laying the groundwork for those machines' eventual upgrade to Windows 10. Although the  Windows 10 release date  was not announced officially, the details of this update also reveal how Microsoft might try to convince users to update to the latest Windows 10 version.  The  KB3035583  update "enables additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications when new updates are available to the user", which sounds pretty common. That is, until you dig into the update files and see a certain  GWXUXWorker.exe which, upon further inspection, would actually "Download Windows 10". So this rather ...