GOQii Case Study - The new Wearable Tech with Personalised Health Experts
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The pandemic started to spread across the world's boundaries in about march of 2020. It soon accelerated lockdowns all over the world. Major and minor, both types of cities came to a standstill. Not only this, people were confined to their homes. We spent an enormous amount of time inside our houses.
Nothing stopped the pandemic too, thanks to technology. Essentials, medicines and other things were shared and delivered with the help of technology. With these advancements, technology came to us as a saviour. The only thing that jumped to the back seat was health. The health of people all over the world took a toll because of excessive screen time and the sedentary lifestyle we all were having during the covid 19. The virus is still not gone and the sedentary lifestyle still continues.
If you look at the data of shipments of the wearable industry in India, you will notice a steep trend. That graph shows that people are buying products that help them track their health statistics. This in turn means that people are slowly becoming vocal about the fact that their health is the most important asset that they own.
Many wearable brands are trying to capitalise on this trend of health consciousness. One of the players that are trying hard and equally shining is GOQii. You probably have already heard of this company. It has been very vocal about health and fitness, as they make fitness-related products. This is the article that covers the story of the ‘getting popular’ brand GOQii. Read this to know the man behind this innovation and the mission with which they operate.
What is GOQii?
About Vishal Gondal - CEO at GOQii
How was the Idea of GOQii Conceived?
Unique Selling Propositions of GOQii
The GOQii Ecosystem
User Testimonials (What the users are saying about GOQii)
FAQ
What is GOQii?
GOQii is a fitness technology company. It is an Indian company in the sense that the brand is operated and even was generated by an Indian entrepreneur. However, it is an Indian company, it is headquartered in California. This fitness technology company offers a band of services and products that cover overall aspects of health for a person. It has smart wearable devices (Like a smartwatch or a smart fitness band). That device is coupled with a mobile app that works like the command centre for that wearable device.
The unique thing about this company working in the health and fitness sector is that it offers a “coach” to every user. GOQii wearables and the android app has ‘personalised remote coaching. They have a team of health experts and doctors that guides every user to optimise his/her health goals. This optimization with each and every user helps maintain a healthy ecosystem in which people derive results.
We all know or have heard somewhere that, everybody is different, you cannot examine each and everybody with the same instrument. That is when personalised care is needed and that is when the worth of personal coaches and trainers come into the picture.
They operated under the umbrella of a beta program until 2014 and then they closed it. After the closing of their beta program, GOQii became commercially available in India in August of 2014. It is to be noted that the beta program was closed in April of the same year.
The company has offices in Mumbai, Shenzhen, China and it hopes to have offices in the Middle East, the United States and Singapore. This venture has been highly trusted by investors of all sorts. Investors include Mitsui, NEA, Megadelta, DSG Consumer Partners, Galaxy Digital, Denlow Investment Trust, Edelweiss, Cheetah Mobile, GWC, Mr Ratan Tata (The OG investor), Mr Akshay Kumar (Popular Indian Actor) and Mr Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm CEO).
About Vishal Gondal - CEO at GOQii
Vishal Gondal is a serious serial entrepreneur. We mean it seriously when we say, serious serial entrepreneur. Vishal started coding at the age of 16. He was passionate about gaming and soon started to build games of his own. At that age when a person knows how to code, the only favourable thing he/she codes are games. Those were the early days of the Internet and computers per se.
It was later in the year 1998 when something really interesting happened for Vishal. It was the time of Kargil and he out of curiosity made a game named “I love India”, and the main purpose of the game was to shoot intruders in the Indian boundary. The game was an instant hit and got over a lakh download at that time,
In 1998. That was impressive at the time as it is today. Then he got an idea that games that are India made and a little patriotic thematic in nature will go a long way if produced nicely. That was the time when IndiaGames, a venture came into existence. It was the brainchild of Vishal Gondal. Then he worked with venture capitalists and all, took the company from informally a game maker to a big name in the gaming industry. In 2011 Disney bought IndiaGames at a deal of over 100 million dollars.
That is a lot of money. Most people would take that money and go on a vacation of life. That “most people '' are not Vishal Gondal. Vishal chose to not get stagnant or dormant, he chose to flow in the direction of his passion. His passion other than games is easily guessable, It is fitness and health.
Vishal moved to the health and fitness sector to work his ideas out. He was also into fitness as all those previous years had a toll on his health because he was working on computers a lot. He affected millions with his games (in a good and thrilling way) and now he did not choose to stay put, but he chose to provide value to the next billion people.
He enjoys running Marathons, Ultras, Trekking & SkyDiving. His love for the outdoors and pushing oneself physically dates to his growing years when he was a national level volleyball player. Vishal is also a long time TEDster, gadget & gizmo freak and a judge on two television shows 'The Pitch' on Bloomberg TV & 'Your Wish is my App' on NDTV.
His passion for technology, fitness & gaming led him to his next venture GOQii which is focused on helping people make a change towards a healthier lifestyle and be the force of good.
That is why he chose health as the domain for his next venture. He decided to jump on the health sector and that was how GOQii was born, the ultimate health and fitness ecosystem.
How was the Idea of GOQii Conceived?
The company was founded by a smart person named Vishal Gondal. He is a super tech enthusiast. He is also the former Chief executive officer of Indiagames. He is a big name in the gaming industry. Made some really successful and critically acclaimed games in the 90s and then the most recent hit FAU-G.
After exiting the gaming space, with a great dreamy exit from his own Indiagames when it was bought by Disney, he could have enjoyed life anyhow he wanted but he noticed something. He noticed that after all his star career in the gaming space, his health has taken a toll on him. Albeit, He was a fairly sporty person in his college and school time. His love for the outdoors and pushing oneself physically dates to his growing years when he was a national level volleyball player.
After affecting millions of people with his games in a good and thrilling way, he chose the health sector. When asked why he started working again, he said that he is just a passionate person who is trying to follow his passion of creating value and putting an effect on a billion people.
His goal is to see people healthy and happy. He plans to make not only people in India healthy but also plans to expand GOQii to a place that will make it responsible for health and fitness for many areas in the world.
As it is said that software is the most scalable thing in the whole world. Once the worth is proven by GOQii, its software can go overseas and start creating impact there too as it is doing in India. For its future, GOQii plans to expand its services to the Middle East, the United States, and Singapore.
Harshit Verma
Unique Selling Propositions of GOQii
GOQii is not just another smart wearable brand that promises to track accurate data regarding your health. Vishal Gondal plans to make it much more than it already is. Much more than the world has seen. He wants to evolve the digital fitness industry up to a level that is never seen before. Not to mention, Vishal has high hopes for the wearable industry. He even says that these wearables will soon replace mobile phones in the near future.
So what is the USP of GOQii? It is a legit genuine question that may haunt you. There are many many USPs of this fitness startup but few most noticeable features are listed here -
- GOQii has a full-fledged health-friendly ecosystem.
- Personalised health statistics with health experts.
- The corporate challenge and User testimonials.
All these are the most loved unique prepositions that people love. Let us discuss all of them in a little more detail to understand the market in which they operate.
The GOQii Ecosystem
We, in the last paragraph’s last line, mentioned an ecosystem of health. That ecosystem is known as the GOQii fitness ecosystem. As we previously read that GOQii manufactures watches and bands and other wearables to provide you control of your health.
Not only this, but the fitness company also provides all sorts of help from, weather coaches or experts or doctors and nutrition people. That personal coaching aspect of GOQii is the innovation that acts as a USP or a unique selling proposition.
The ecosystem entails the application which is connected to the smart wearable device that you wear. The tracker is connected and reports all data to coaches, doctors, and experts if you have the subscription. Every Health coach is a certified coach under the company GOQii.
This environment that they have managed to create is called the GOQii ecosystem. It is a full-fledged place for all your health needs, that is what the company strives to offer. It strives to combine a smart fitness band, an app, a team that is expert and has cared for your health. That team includes a personal health coach, all sorts of designated experts and a Doctor for helping you out to meet the targets that you set for yourself and for the people you love.
GOQii also plans partnerships with top labs in the domain of diagnostics. It helps you to get recommendations for tests that might help you on the basis of the targets that you need to tough. You can do some of the reports from the comfort of your home and you can then access the reports directly on the app.
The GOQii ecosystem is designed to keep chronic diseases under control through increased adherence to therapy, lifestyle change and continuous data monitoring. Doctors are adopting this ecosystem for managing chronic diseases of their patients and are seeing great results. It has an app locker that they call a health locker. It is a cloud storage tool. That helps people to save their health records.
That cloud has unlimited space so that you don’t have to worry about losing your health records. That locker is accessible and can be accessed even remotely via a login and pass. GOQii has tied up with diagnostics labs like Thyrocare, which allow users to book tests directly via the GOQii app. Test results are directly sent to the Health Locker to be reviewed by the GOQii Coach and GOQii Doctor.
There is one more thing that you get with the GOQii ecosystem. It has a bonus feature called “Karma”. It is quite similar to the real phenomenon of karma. If you do something good, you will receive something good.
With the ‘Karma’ feature GOQii plans to use the same philosophy for a good social cause. So what happens is, if you walk with this feature, you get points, the more you collect points, the more you can donate to social causes that the company supports. It matches the philosophy of the whole wearable brand of “Be the force”.
Personalised care with health experts
GOQii runs on two models, that too simultaneously. It has the main product domain, which is the smart wearable technology that it advertises with Akshay Kumar. The other domain is the personalised health coaches support. This is the back end sort of thing and you can only experience it with a subscription that you can buy with the product itself.
Both these packages combined help in building a rapport with your own health. The best thing about the combination of health and technology is that it is capable of providing personalised results and guides and suggestions to the person using it.
As we all know, people love personalised tech. Like we love Netflix recommendations, and the social media algorithms to work on personalised tech. This is very recently made possible with the help of new and efficient technology for maintaining data, big data. It is a field that deals with extracting data and making sense of large amounts of data. It is true that data is the gold of the 21st century.
GOQii Corporate Challenge
One of the most stuck starts of people who are not living a healthy lifestyle at all is the corporate people. The pressure to rise up at the corporate level makes them sit for long hours and thus deteriorates the health of these hard-working people. We can easily see and witness all around us that corporate people are the most prone to health discomforts.
GOQii has innovated a cool thought in this area of life. The fitness company organises a corporate challenge every now and then. The corporate challenge is a sixty-day fitness event. So, it spans about two months in total. This corporate challenge includes daily virtual and fitness sessions that are corporate-friendly.
Corporate friendly exercises means those sorts of exercises that can be performed in a short space and with low intensity of work done or effort induced. This allows all the employees to walk, get active, increase their fitness levels and make a positive move towards living a healthier lifestyle. Moreover, it is all in the app, a single application that entails everything for your health.
GOQii Health quiz
Not only the corporate challenge, but GOQii also has hosted a series of health quizzes in the past. The motive of these quizzes was to improve the general knowledge about health. It is often seen in our society that we tend to believe some myths and misconceptions of the fitness world.
The goal of these health-related challenges and quizzes is to bust the myth around health and common fitness in society. Moreover, GOQii has taken a step further than just casual challenges and quizzes of stagnant general knowledge, it now hosts experts that debunk myths around health.
If you visit their youtube page, you will find a plethora and plenty of videos that are hosted by health experts, personal health coaches, doctors and nutritionists. This sort of clear and unbiased knowledge is freely available, this is a great initiative by Vishal and the team at GOQii. It helps build a rapport with users who are truly willing to do the actions required to meet their health and fitness goals.
GOQii Arena
The GOQii social feature lets you discover and make new friends, share your habits, goals, health & fitness stories, as well as motivate each other! It helps you build communities of like-minded individuals who share similar goals with GOQii users within the app in your region.
GOQii Health store
The GOQii Health store is a one-stop online health store that offers a whole suite of curated health products and services. These products are tested for quality by our experts before being launched in the store. You can also redeem your GOQii Cash for discounts on listed products.
Harshit Verma
User Testimonials (What the users are saying about GOQii)
The GOQii watches went on from a beta version to a full-fledged company in April 2014. It is still somewhere in the middle phases of growth in India. As we all know that India is a very big country and global brands are fighting very hard to establish themselves in our country.
GOQii is one of the native brands that is trying hard to speak up among such massive competition from global brands. One of the best ways to look at the quality that the brand creates is by checking its testimonials. Let us see what people are saying about the GOQii ecosystem.
“Rahul Pandit gets off medication and gets healthier with GOQii'' read an article on a website. This is an article that was listed on the blog that the GOQii team manages. The blog has all the success stories of fat to fit and healthy and happy people who have used the product and the support of coaches from GOQii.
This proves that there are actually real stories that are transformed with products and services that GOQii strives to provide. The blog not only contains success stories but the blog tries to become a companion in someone's fitness journey. It entails all the healthy tips, tricks, recipes that will help people get from a bad shape to probably the best shape of their lives.
This is a user testimonial that typed words on Youtube. He is thankful for how he found GOQii and how it has become a part of his life. This is one example but there are plenty more. GOQii has many people supporting it and making it an established brand.
Akshay Kumar, the actor and probable epitome of fitness in India is the brand ambassador of this company. As it gets more and more views and subscriptions, one thing is sure, that if GOQii is able to stand the market in India, then probably it can win most of the world.
Conclusion
Being healthy involves a lot of factors other than just exercise. You need to watch what you eat, get quality sleep and manage stress effectively as well. With a lot of foreign brands trying to provide value in this space, there are very few Indian brands that are trying to enter and establish themselves in this market.
GOQii is one of them. It strives to provide a full ecosystem for health and fitness. It has personalised coaches, health experts and all sorts of advantages that the wearable tech industry has to offer.
GOQii was started with the same goal in mind. That goal was to make a billion people happy and healthy. The focus is primarily on India. GOQii, a collaboration of some of the world's leading experts and an amazing management team who are driven by a passion for healthy sustainable living, and who believe that all of us contain boundless potential.
GOQii's goal is to enable millions of people across the world to "be the force" by helping them unleash their untapped potential. The passion with which Vishal and team manage and build products for India, Is the fuel for such ventures. All these steps will lead to a healthy and happy India.
FAQ
Who is the founder of GOQii?
Vishal Gondal is the founder and CEO of GOQii.
What is the revenue of GOQii?
The revenue of GOQii was ₹220 million as of 2019.
Is GOQii an Indian company?
Yes, GOQii is an Indian company founded by Vishal Gondal, the company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
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