How Fitness Aggregator Platform BookYourGame Is Levelling Up By Integrating Data Science And SaaS To Bite $1 Bn+ Health And Fitness Pie
Well! This is the story of many people around us. While a few get burdened with twelve-hour workdays and stretched schedules, others simply discover ‘gymming’ a bit too expensive for their wallet. This similarly complements the fact that the fee of fitness penetration in India is just 0.37% which incorporates handiest those having a fitness membership in a fitness center or a health membership. Even globally, there are 67% human beings with gymnasium memberships who never use them.
MDI Gurgaon alumni and Ex-Goldman Sachs govt, Devi Prasad Biswal located this gap as an opportunity to introduce BookYourGame (BYG) – a fitness era app with a unique B2B2C business version.
He was joined by another Ex-Goldman Sachs government and IIM Kozhikode graduate, Avijeet Alagathi, who also occurs to be an investor in Devi Prasad’s first startup, Candidly Couture – a girls’s style brand. It become right here that Devi solid sturdy bonds and observed a believer in his future co-founder. BYG turned into something Avijeet may want to right away connect with and Devi Prasad was someone he knew is the right companion to paintings with.
The BYG group also considers Arya, the crew’s puppy canine, to be an respectable co-founding member – entire with her personal special identify of Co-founder and Chief Troublemaker.
How It All Started: When Gyms Forget About New Members
The concept of BYG originated when a close buddy of Devi Prasad become asked almost the identical rate for a 3-month fitness center membership that he was paying yearly. Having been raised in a middle elegance, exceedingly-disciplined own family, Devi Prasad understood the fact of ‘confined profits, restricted spending’ very well.
So, he deep dived into the overall fitness segment and observed that at the consumer side – severe charge versions and shortage of transparency is a major problem to be handled. Plus, humans need to be encouraged to step into the fitness center without an awful lot economic burden.
On the B2B aspect, he analysed that with all of the promotion schemes on, a mean gym spends no much less than INR 1,500 to collect each new client. However, what truely takes place is, inside the first month they engage with each of the new contributors after which they forget about them. Nobody even bothers to invite why he/she is lacking the sessions. This in the long run ends in a drop in renewal rate to 20-25%, dropping a client inside a yr.
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Another, hilarious trouble gyms face is – they frequently neglect the renewal dates of the contributors. As Devi Prasad shared, “One of my friends and I have been contributors of Gold’s Gym. As our renewal dates drew close, we anticipated a reminder. But it did now not manifest, even long after the real date became crossed out. Apparently, my pal persisted going to the fitness center for the complete 12 months, with out paying a unmarried penny.”
He further introduced, “Since, they don't have any capacity utilisation hassle, humans come and work out without cost. With the entire management being manually dealt with, there is loss of attendance monitoring by 15-20%. Gyms recognise that is a problem, however they didn’t have any option to it.”
The duo then conceptualised the concept of BYG in December 2015. A purchaser app become launched in February 2016 to assist customers find close by gyms and health centres. And an internet-based totally SaaS product for gyms become released to help them manipulate processes greater efficiently.
The Key Features: The App And The Web Product
The purchaser app lets in the user to discover greater than forty types of health sports in close by gyms, and health in five cities throughout India. It claims to make to be had the preferred sort of membership from the app handiest, and at the bottom fee.
As Avijeet stated,
“The region suffers from pricing asymmetry, as right here, it all depends on how long you're ready to linger there. What we are doing as an aggregator is largely making fees obvious, assured lowest pricing, in almost 80% of our health centres, to ensure that every customer feels that it's far affordable.”
It also offers a unique alternative of ‘Workout Now.’ This lets in a person to opt for fitness sessions dynamically, with pricing consistent with consultation starting from INR 50 contemplating how complete or empty the health club is. Workout Now is more often than not an option for two styles of people – the ones who have never been to the health club until now and people who are touring most of the time.
When asked about how on the spot bookings with the ‘Workout Now’ option are controlled at the gym quit, Devi Prasad explained, “Suppose the health club has a capability of 100 men and women. So, if there are forty people inside the fitness center, we will tell the commercial enterprise index of the fitness center is 40% and it’s an amazing gym to exercise in actual-time. If it’s eighty%, then pricing will boom. People will obtain a notification on mail and SMS. Also, a notification might be sent to gyms on when the next exercise is scheduled for.”
On the business aspect, its SaaS product lets in gyms to manipulate leads and individuals correctly at one region and with well timed automatic notifications and updates. It permits the fitness center manager to music attendance and interfere in a well timed manner in case of losing attendance. Also, it facilitates in focused advertising to prospective clients through the BYG app.
“They can ship out notifications to members on a drop within the attendance, membership renewal and greater. Gyms can filter out customers through the app and might talk very very without difficulty. Also, we can analyse styles of statistics, and might manipulate the commercial enterprise in a much better way,” he stated.
2,700 Centres, 30K Users, 59% Repeat Purchases
The business model works in two methods. On the B2C facet, they have a median fee of 17% on every transaction. On the B2B facet, for a new health club, the common fee is 30%. “For the gyms, this profits we're giving them is absolutely incremental. Each penny we are giving to them is at once going to their profit line, because for every new customer they don’t must buy a brand new machine or employ a new teacher,” stated Devi Prasad.
They also fee gyms for his or her SaaS-based product. As of now, more or less 15% to twenty% gyms are procuring the internet product and majority are on free trials. However, the founders expect to earn about INR 3,000 in line with month consistent with gym, in the near future.
At gift, BYG is unfold across 2,seven hundred fitness centres in 5 cities consisting of Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, and Bhubaneshwar. The platform serves near 30,000 customers with fifty nine% repeat purchases.
BYG has grown 50X on topline inside the beyond six months, as claimed through the founders.
When asked approximately the demanding situations, the founders believe that launching in five cities at the identical time became the most important venture they faced and controlled to conquer. “Every metropolis turned into a startup of its own, and we had to build neighborhood stage management, pitch in a different way in each market and conduct specific topics of marketing,” delivered Avijeet.
Fundraising became any other mission. As Devi Prasad said, “We started out our fundraising across the same time when Flipkart’s valuation was slashed. Despite having promising initial traction, and an experienced crew we had to speak to nearly fifty five angel buyers before locating our lead investor.”
Building the tech platform and locating proper skills were some different challenges that they faced in the initial months.
How SaaS Will Help BYG Stand Out From Competition
FitPass is the startup that competes closely with BYG. The platform connects clients with nearby gyms and studios. As claimed via the founder Akshay Verma, it provides limitless get entry to to lakhs of fitness workout routines with a month-to-month club of INR 999. It has an affiliation with 1250+ gyms like Gold’s Gym, Snap Fitness, and many others., that may provide greater than 100,000+ options with exceptional types of exercises like yoga, dancing, gyming, aerobics, skating, martial arts etc.
The platform currently boasts of 30,000+ app downloads (iOS & Android), 50,000+ registered users and double digit conversion price.
Other comparable portals are Fitternity, Gympik, FitTicket, Fitraq and greater.
BYG however, believes that its unique commercial enterprise model, dynamic pricing on Workout Now, and its SaaS product on the gymnasium stop – are the capabilities with a purpose to help in status out from the crowd.
As Devi Prasad said, “There are similar models in the industry, but no different player is aiming at the identical goals as us. We consider that statistics technological know-how and information products can create amazing fee for customers, and BYG plans to leverage that to improve the health industry.”
Pumping For Profits In 2018
The duo to begin with invested $112K (INR seventy five Lakhs) from their very own savings. They claimed to have lately raised a Seed spherical of $500K in June 2016 from Sanjay Verma, CEO Cushman Wakefield, Asia Pacific; Amit Khanna, Managing Partner, Antuit; Ishan Manaktala, COO Core One -IHS Markit; and Sameer Sawhney, CEO ANZ Asia Pacific.
The crew further expects to develop every other 2.5X over the next six months, and release in global markets including US, Brazil, Dubai, Singapore, and Hong Kong in 2017. It is likewise in talks with numerous sports and health producers to act as a market for his or her products.
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Soon, the app will also combine records at the each day exercise regimes, weekly goals, vitamins necessities of the consumer and extra. Also, many at the coverage aspect are looking ahead to the health records amassed, that can, inside the near future be used as a base for figuring out rates. It expects to be profitable with the aid of cease of 2018 and is trying to increase Series A next year.
Devi Prasad in addition brought that,
“We purpose to end up the primary Fitness Data Company and use all of the records we ought to construct a much higher and improved product that creates colossal value for all fitness fans. We take a look at Mindbody (NASDAQ-indexed) as a organisation that's doing similar matters inside the B2B area in the US.”
Editor’s Note
The general quantity of funding in the fitness enterprise in India has more than doubled in the final two years. Since 2014, $37.21 Mn have been invested in 34 deals, $21.2 Mn by myself being invested in 2016 in 10 deals. Also, the modern-day fitness and slimming industry length in India is over $1.1 Bn and is developing at 20% a 12 months with a restricted set of organised gamers.
Suffice it to mention, the health and health industry is ripe for the picking, in phrases of both employer and market proportion through startups with specific answers that cater to both the business and cease-user like BookYourGame and others of its ilk.
