Gamified Fitness: Startups Turning Health Goals into Achievable Targets

Insights from Cadoo, Joina and Social Boat

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in gamifying fitness. Several fitness apps and platforms have emerged that offer users a fun, engaging way to achieve their health goals. The concept behind gamified fitness is simple: users are more likely to stay motivated and reach their fitness milestones by turning health goals into achievable targets.

Joina, Social Boat, and Cadoo are three such platforms that have successfully incorporated gamification into their health and fitness offerings. In a recent conversation, the founders of these companies shared their insights on how they turned their ideas into successful companies.

Leonie Sterner Sazesh, CEO & founder of Joina, shared how she and her husband started the platform after working in the health and fitness industry and realizing that people needed a solution to stay accountable to their healthy habits when motivation is lost. She stated, "Joina is a social platform that turns your health journey into a game — through achievable goals, gamification, challenges, and rewards."

Swapnil Vats, the co-founder of Social Boat, noted the fundamental retention problem in the fitness industry. He stated, "150 million people globally pay $400 annually yearly for fitness, but they drop off within a month, two weeks, or even a week. This is 80% of the total 184 million people that go to the gym. The industry has a fundamental retention problem. That is what we are trying to solve."

Colm Hayden, founder and CEO of Cadoo shared how he was inspired to create the app after betting on fitness challenges with friends in high school. He stated, "We help people reach their fitness goals using financial incentives. We are the most motivating fitness app on the internet."

These insights offer a glimpse into the minds of the founders of these companies and their motivations for incorporating gamification into their health and fitness offerings. Through gamification, each platform aims to address the fundamental retention problem in the fitness industry, making it more likely that users will stick to their health goals and achieve the desired results.

Gamified fitness has become a popular trend in recent years, and for good reason. It offers users a fun and engaging way to achieve their health goals, providing instant gratification and a sense of achievement. Using health data to make challenges measurable and validated, these platforms provide users with an accurate overview of their fitness journey.

The use of wearable technology has made gamified fitness even more accessible, enabling users to track their progress and measure their achievements. However, there are still gaps in health data, such as the cost of smartwatches, which can exclude lower-income groups from tracking their health.

The future of gamified fitness is promising, with the use of AI to provide users with advice on improving their health through wearable devices. As the industry continues to evolve, we expect to see more innovative solutions that make achieving health goals a fun and rewarding experience.

In the words of Swapnil Vats, co-founder of Social Boat, "We are trying to build fitness games that can give you gratification to the same degree as, say, scoring your first goal in Fifa." With gamified fitness, achieving health goals can be just as satisfying as scoring that winning goal.