How a UAE personal training app digitizes fitness

Tarek Mounir, who has spent many years as a business leader, admits to having always dreamed of being an entrepreneur. The former head of Middle East operations at Deezer invested in several companies before finally going on his own.

From restaurants to wellness tech, Mr. Mounir exhausted all options before embarking on full-fledged entrepreneurship.

“I burned my fingers quite a bit before I got to a place where I was like, ‘this is a good idea,’” he says.

“But I always knew I was going to own a business. There was never any doubt in my mind that this was going to happen. I just needed to have the right timing [and] the right idea.

It took 15 years for Mr. Mounir to focus on this perfect idea: to digitize fitness. It all started when Mr. Mounir, a avowed fitness enthusiast, couldn’t find a good personal trainer to meet his exercise needs.

“I thought that if we provided a service with quality personal training, practical selection, competitive pricing strategy and put it on an app… we would create a proposition in the market that will be very competitive and in high demand. . “

The entrepreneur is focused on a multi-million dollar industry. The UAE’s fitness industry is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 10.9% to over $ 600 million by 2025, according to Ken Research. Meanwhile, the online health and fitness market is expected to generate $ 36.5 million in revenue by 2025.

In 2018, Mr. Mounir founded Enhance Fitness, which allows users to book personal workouts through an app. The company offers a variety of sessions for individual and group users, with monthly plans starting at Dh 2,268 for 12 standard sessions. It also offers more flexible plans, which tend to be slightly more expensive than a regular subscription.

The workout can be done in people’s homes, in their community gyms, or in gyms that collaborate with Enhance Fitness in the United Arab Emirates.

The app has thousands of monthly users, according to Mounir, who did not provide exact figures.

Although Enhance Fitness suffered a direct impact on revenue caused by the temporary restrictions on movement during the Covid-19 outbreak – a period that Mr Mounir jokingly calls “an acid test” – membership numbers have increased in the meantime. June 2020 when the United Arab Emirates eased restrictions when the number of infections started to rise. falls.

“There have been a lot of improvements for the services that are delivered differently after Covid-19. But if you see gym attendance, for example, it literally skyrocketed after Covid, ”Mounir said.

“Our monthly growth has been [in the] two digits.

The regional trend is in line with that of other countries. About 37% of fitness club users surveyed by US investment bank Harrison Co in 2020 said they would work more after Covid-19 while 50% said they were motivated to do so due to a renewed appreciation of their well-being.

Gym membership has also benefited from the trend to return to the office as economies open up.

Digitization of fitness isn’t an entirely new idea, especially after the pandemic where measures included physical distancing – often a chilling effect on the attractiveness of gyms and sweaty exercise machines.

But unlike other on-demand platforms that bundle only the offerings of independent trainers, Enhance Fitness operates on a business model in which the company employs its own trainers and generates revenue from training. All personal trainers are on his payroll.

“Your personal trainer is potentially someone who could see you three to four times a week. It is a very repetitive type of activity, not one-off. Therefore, when you rely on freelancers to provide such a service, it causes problems, ”said Mounir.

However, managing an internal team of over 200 trainers is not easy.

“It requires a lot of rigorous systems, discipline and operational efficiency,” Mounir said.

Having its own team of physical trainers has helped the company provide support to businesses or third parties, effectively diversifying its customer base.

“Many entities such as hotels and commercial gyms come to us… asking us to provide them and manage the entire personal training experience because it is difficult for these entities to manage the personal trainers.

“They don’t plan their careers, they don’t invest in their training. We literally draw a career plan for [personal trainers]. We give them technology to make their service much more efficient.

Enhance Fitness also makes extensive use of technology to create a smooth fitness experience, Mr. Mounir said. Trainers have access to an application with software that helps design a client’s training program after considering the user’s fitness requirements.

This would mean that the trainer can spend more time performing these programs, monitoring breathing, posture, technique and engagement in actual training, in addition to motivating clients, says Mounir.

“There are a lot of soft skills required for this business. Giving trainers the ability to use technology is really the key to providing top quality service, allowing the trainer to really focus on soft skills and, you know, improving their clients and results.

As demand for on-demand fitness rebounds, Mounir and his team prepare to expand beyond the United Arab Emirates, where they operate in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The entrepreneur is finalizing plans to enter Saudi Arabia this year as the company aims to establish a presence in Riyadh and, later, Jeddah.

Although Mr. Mounir started the business in the early years, he was able to benefit from private investors. In September, the startup closed a $ 3M Series A funding round with Global Ventures.

“The main use of funds is usually for healthy and sustainable growth. There were more people hired for the technology part, more marketing expenses, more people hired as trainers and there was a geographic expansion, ”said Mounir.

Q&A with Tarek Mounir, Managing Director of Enhanced Fitness

What new skills did you acquire when starting your business?

I think the biggest change for me has been the direct link with the consumer sector, where we really have to take care of every customer. It is a service – a repetitive service. And, you know, it’s humans and humans can sometimes make mistakes. So that’s very tricky and I think the greatest skill is being absolutely determined to achieve excellence in customer service no matter what. It was quite new to me. It’s a part that I have always dedicated to my teams [in my previous roles]. For example, in the broadcast or streaming industry, your customers number in the millions. So you don’t really hit the customer one by one at the customer service level. Here we are and that only adds a lot of humility and empathy to everyone’s skills.

If you could start all over again, what would you do differently?

Hindsight is a good thing. If I had known Covid-19 was coming, we would have done a lot of things differently. I always have mixed feelings on this issue because you never have that kind of perspective, where you can always plan things. And you can always say, OK, here are the scenarios that could play out and here is our plan. Coming from the business, you learn to plan for three and five years and put in place plans that should withstand different kinds of pressures and different kinds of challenges. I think it’s very important for us to keep an open mind to the evolution – and to make sure that you are at the forefront and that you don’t catch up.

Do you have a business model?

I do. I think it goes back to the founders with a lot of empathy and love for their own people. Those who can combine technology with great people are probably [who I think are] the best founders. Steve Jobs is someone who has always understood that the heart of innovation is people. Another example is Ray Dalio [an American investor and hedge fund manager], who I think was incredibly good at developing talent and taking care of people and, at the same time, using technology to empower them.

What would you say to an entrepreneur who is just starting out?

If you don’t work hard, the ideas don’t matter. Your best idea is worthless without execution. If you are already working hard, ideas are crucial. Most of the effort is wasted on poor ideas. I have seen a lot of entrepreneurs get attached to ideas and it is a very dangerous pattern to follow. In a business, you have to be committed to your business, you have to find the right people to build it, and you have to grow. But if you’re already doing it, you need to keep creating ideas. Flexibility, ability and agility are at the heart of what you do. You should always think again about your decisions, you should always make sure that you involve all of the team members who can and will add value to you and will help keep an open mind.

Update: January 9, 2022, 4 a.m.