Health and fitness coaching for the masses with FitBudd

How can health and fitness coaches reach a wider market to cut costs and help more people live healthier lives? Software-as-a-service startup FitBudd, announcing $3.4 million in seed funding today, thinks it has the answer. Its platform allows coaches and clients to work together on a much larger scale than ever before.

FitBudd was born from the personal experience of Saumya Mittal, CEO of the company, and fellow founders, Pranav Chaturvedi and Naman Singhal. "I was trying to get back in shape after having kids, but didn't get the results I wanted until I started working with a personal trainer," Mittal recalls. "It made me realize how important it is to have someone to keep you on your toes and hold you accountable."

The peculiarity of Mittal's coaching was that he was based in the United States, while Mittal herself lived in India. The relationship happened entirely online — and Mittal and his co-founders had their eureka moment. “Having a personal trainer makes all the difference in terms of getting results, but most people can't afford that option, or just don't have access to it,” she says. "We started talking to the coaches to find out if we could help them solve the problem."

FitBudd is the culmination of those conversations. Health and fitness trainers based anywhere in the world can join the platform by paying a monthly subscription. It provides them with features like customer relationship management, payment systems, analytics, and video calling through which they can manage their businesses. As a result, they can serve a global clientele, offering a combination of face-to-face personal sessions conducted on the platform and additional materials such as workout instructions and nutrition plans that clients can download at their convenience. The platform is also linked to customers' fitness devices so that trainers can monitor their performance.

FitBudd's vision is of an industry where Coaches are able to support and manage far more clients than ever before, scaling their businesses - and their incomes - much faster. This, in turn, should enable them to lower their fees, ensuring that personal coaching becomes much more widely available – Mittal believes that coaches using the platform should be able to offer their services at around a fifth of the cost of traditional training.

"We're using technology to democratize health and fitness coaching," says Mittal. “We want to help coaches grow their business and give more people access to life-changing help. She points to research suggesting that while people who strive to achieve health and fitness goals on their own are largely disappointed, over 70% of those who hire a personal trainer achieve their goals. p>

This is the start of FitBudd, which was only launched a year ago, but the progress made so far is encouraging. The platform has already registered more than 1,000 coaches in twenty countries around the world, and revenues are 10 times higher in the first months of trading. The goal is to reach $5 million in recurring revenue over the next 18 months.

Today's seed cycle should help the company achieve this goal. FitBudd has raised $3.4 million from Accel India, Beenext, Sequoia Capital India and Waveform Ventures, with the money earmarked for continued product development and customer acquisition.

"There is a clear shift in the fitness and wellness industry of 'solopreneurs' separating from institutions and creating their own digital and hybrid businesses," says Manasi Shah, Vice President of Accel . "FitBudd is accelerating the success of these independent entrepreneurs while delivering customization at scale to end users."

Mittal wants to add features to the platform soon. She hopes to launch multi-person connectivity so that trainers can offer group lessons. And FitBudd is also exploring contextual automation technologies that will help Coaches manage their clients more effectively, by monitoring client activity and notifying the Coach if someone is falling behind, for example, in order to trigger a contact.

“Our most important goal is to make a dent in the trends of deteriorating health that we see in so many countries around the world,” adds Mittal. "We know that health and wellness coaches can make a big difference in helping people reverse these trends, so it's critical that more people have access to them."