[App Fridays] How Mobiefit BODY, a zero-equipment m-Fitness app is leveraging sensors and trainers to help people get fit

Can a ‘zero-equipment’ fitness app help people reach their fitness goals? We explore one such app, MobieFit BODY in this week’s App Friday.

Co-founded by Gourav Jaswal and Gul Panag, Mobiefit, is a mobile-fitness (m-fitness) startup born at Prototyze, a Goa-based venture-builder. Prototyze currently has five ventures that have collectively raised over $12 million in investment. These include digital lending company Seynse, IoT plus SaaS transportation technology company TempoGO and a mTraining SaaS platform HandyTrain.

Mobiefit currently has two mobile apps - Mobiefit Run and Body. As the names suggest, Run focuses on helping people with basic and advanced skills to run distances from 5 km to up to 42 km. In its previous avatar, the app was called FirstRun.

Related read- [App Fridays] FirstRun aims to get people marathon ready in nine weeks with training from Gul Panag

According to the company, Mobiefit RUN users have clocked in more than 500,000 km. Beginners have tracked around 14,000 individual running sessions lasting at least 5 km, while more seasoned runners clocked 600+ half and full marathon sessions. Pravar Peri who leads Marketing at Mobiefit said in a statement,

Our data reflects the story of our users as they continue to chase new personal milestones each day. For instance 30 Mobiefit runners have run a 5K within 12 to 15 minutes (The world record stands at 12:37s). The longest individual run we’ve recorded was more than 62km, and one of our users clocked a staggering total of 969 km last year. 

YourStory recently spoke to Sushant Chavan, Venture Head at Mobeift, and Shantanu Raghav, Head of Product, Mobiefit to understand more about Mobiefit BODY, which is positioned as a zero-equipment workout app. The company claims it has tracked over 1.1 million unique exercise reps - including 500,000 push-ups, 485,000 squats and 175,000 crunches. Shantanu noted that between both the apps, 185,000 users have collectively burnt over 34 million calories.

Apart from individual records, the duo also revealed temporal and seasonal usage patterns. For example, Tuesdays typically see the most number of workout sessions started, while the most active time periods are between 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm, followed by 6:30 am to 7:30 am. Spring seems to be the most active season in the year, with maximum sessions being logged between February - April.The duo explained that Mobiefit has so far amassed over 30 million fitness related data points, Sushant shared,

Compared to traditional gyms which only capture a member’s name, age, height and weight; for every Mobiefit user, we capture over 50 data points including type of exercise, duration and frequency of workouts, reps done, intensity, calories burnt, diet preferences, consistency, progress, and relative strength of different parts of the body. This enables us to create a detailed personal fitness history for each user and tailor their future workouts.

How Mobiefit Body works

The app has five main sections including workouts, challenges, ‘Total Transformation’, a Newsfeed and a ‘My Progress’ section. On signing up for a pro-plan users have the option of selecting one of two coaches - Anoop Singh Thakur or Bani VJ to guide them through their fitness journey. Through this, Mobiefit aims to highlight that they have specifically designed and made the app for Indian body types. Based on their fitness goals, they can then select the type of session they want:

1. Muscle Gain
2. Ultimate Burndown
3. Shape & Tone
4. Mission Six-Pack

After selecting a coach, users are asked to set up a daily workout alarm through a simple calendar interface. They are required to set up a workout schedule that includes a minimum of two sessions and a maximum of six. On logging in for the first time they are made to go through an assessment test to help the app ascertain a base level of fitness for users.

Available in Hindi and English, the app includes video and audio guidance and tutorial sessions from both the celebrity trainers. All programs come with a customised three-month diet and nutrition plan, designed by one of India’s leading celebrity fitness experts, Shwetha Bhatia. 

By leveraging sensors in smartphones, the mobiefit BODY fitness app is able to count repetitions and track workouts for pushups, crunches and squats.

Talking about how this feature works, Shantanu added, “Our USP is combining sensor-based exercise tracking with algorithmically customised workout programmes. Our proprietary SDK includes a motion tracking engine to track distance, duration and pace; and a 3D-motion tracking engine to track bodyweight movements like push-ups, squats and crunches. This enables us to actually ‘count’ each rep during a workout, while our backend algorithm sanitizes this data to eliminate any fraudulent data”,

Since this is a remote fitness programme, the app also includes monthly challenges and also includes ‘How to’ and specific fitness related content.

Revenue model and future plans

Mobiefit Body works on a freemium model where users can access some of the content for free but have to pay a monthly fee to access the different fitness programmes. Mobiefit also monetises its platform by working with brands. Some brands sponsor challenges and also gift prizes to winners. In this way, brands also get t to interact with individuals who are interested in fitness related products.

Apart from its direct customer offering, Mobiefit also provides corporate wellness solutions. with companies like Delhivery, IDFC, Tata Steel, Aditya Birla Group being part of their corporate wellness programme. The userflow is similar to the direct customer facing app, the only difference is that the in-app challenges are restricted to internal employees of the particular company. Mobiefit also recently ventured into offline solutions and currently offer in-person programmes to clients too based on their needs.

On the product front, future iterations of the app will include more workout routines like - High-intensity interval training(HIIT) and Tabata. On the global front, Mobiefit BODY competes with popular players like 7 Minute workout, 30 day fitness challenge etc and apps like Abs Workout by Health Group.

Closer home, in India, there are online and offline players like HealthifyMe and Cure.fit that are looking to help people lose weight, gain muscle and achieve their fitness goals.

Website- Mobiefit