Gudu Fitness aims to be sort of an Uber for exercise. The Israeli startup wants to help people who cannot commit to long term gym memberships.
GUDU describes itself as innovative global on-demand fitness, wellness and lifestyle platform based on data and AI algorithms. The company boasts that it “optimizes the wellness industry” through its new app which offers users on-demand service.
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With Gudu users can connect with international fitness services without long term membership commitments.
The name Gudu doesn’t really mean anything. The company, which was founded about two years ago, is based Tel Aviv, has 5 employees, and launched just before the Corona Virus shutdowns.
A pre-seed funding round raised $500,000. Now Gudo is in a seeding round and looks to bring in $2 million
So why an exercise app?
Yahav Gozlan is the co-founder and CEO of Gudo Fitness. Gozlan brings many years of experience in the industry to the company as well as his army experience. The 36 year old served in an elite IDF infantry recon unit.
Yahav Gozlan
The soldiers who serve in the various Israeli Army reconnaissance units need to stay in shape and come into the military with the highest level of physical fitness.
Gozlan acquired an understanding of the fitness world from his more than seven years of experience managing three different health clubs and working for Holmes Place in Raanana Israel.
There he saw all of the drawbacks and problems that people who want to work out regularly have in trying to do so.
In an interview with Jewish Business News Yahav explained why he started the company:
“There is an attrition rate of something like 70% in the fitness world. So 70% of people with gym memberships and so forth don’t stick with a program or drop out,” he said.
“From my experiences the system is broke. The people want to excessive and have a healthy life, but they do not want to make yearlong commitments,” said Yahav Gozlan.
“Mainly our goal is to simplify things, my partner and I say that working out should be easy. Even before the Corona time, working out is difficult. You have to do Google searches and look all over to find the place where you can find a class.”
So for one thing Gudo provides a single place to find any type of exercise classes or gyms where you are located. This is just one of the difficulties which lead people to stop trying to exercise.
So Yahav decided to make sort of an Uber for the world of fitness saying, “we wanted to ’uberize’ it (fitness) and keep it simple. Try to do everything on one platform – make it a marketplace with vendors.”
“Our goal is just to help people to maintain their workout regimen and stay healthy and help the providers add customers and not have dead time all the time and so forth. We started this service because as users ourselves we saw a problem, what if one you want to do yoga and the next Pilates etc.”
So what does this mean? Let’s say you run a gym in Jerusalem. Maybe there are people in town just for a day or a week. You can offer these people a day to day admission rate without their needing to take out a full membership for a year.
The same applies for Yoga classes, Pilates, calisthenics, aerobics or any other physical fitness activity.
Covid-19 has only exacerbated the problem, especially now her in Israel that the gyms and studios must be closed and even when they are open people don’t want to go to them out of fear of contracting the virus.
So now there are also loads on online options for working out. The same instructors who work at the gyms, the same yoga teachers who offer classes, they offer their services online.
Such services can also be offered through Gudo.
The service is free for users. The company has a “dynamic pricing algorithm” which it uses to determine fees to be charged by the service providers out of which it takes a commission. Prices fluctuate and so does the demand on any given day so the algorithm helps to set the pricing.
“Health training should be like services you van cancel any time,” says Yahav. American gyms allow for monthly payments that can be canceled any time. But in Israel you ordinarily must commit to at least six months.
And maybe no one place offers everything that you need. So why shouldn’t you be able to pay for individual yoga or aerobics, or cycling classes from time to time from different providers.
And the people who offer the services will probably appreciate the chance to drum up some extra business.
