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 immediate sense of their progress and how this ties into longer term fitness goals — something that eGym says helps significantly to reduce the likelihood of demotivation.
“The usability of the gym increases enormously for the member as everything in the gym starts to understand the user,” eGym co-founder and CEO Philipp Roesch-Schlanderer tells TechCrunch.
“Members find their current training plans on their phones, the equipment recognizes the member with a swipe of a wristband and knows already the training plan of the member through the eGym cloud.”
In addition, once the gym member finishes using eGym-enabled strength equipment, the member app and the personal trainer app provides analytics about the workout.
“Thus, not only does usability increase for the members, but also marginal success is visible. Therefore, members see where they are on their path of body transformation after every gym visit,” adds Roesch-Schlanderer.
To that end, eGym’s customers are gym operators, such as Fitness First, Injoy and Reebok, and those gym operators’ own customers. It currently claims 1,000 of Germany’s 6,000 gyms use its products and service, since the company launched in 2012.
In the last two years, eGym has also entered more than half a dozen other European countries, and says it plans to use the new capital for further international expansion, including eyeing up a U.S. launch.