A simple problem has been stumping wearable device makers. Customers buy their shiny fitness trackers, show them off to friends, and then wear them religiously for maybe a month or two. Not long after, many get bored and throw the gadgets in a drawer. How do you motivate customers to keep wearing these wrist bands, to the point they might even pay for future services?
Fitbit thinks the answer is to share your fitness data with friends, stoking your competitive urges. Samsung has packed its Gear Fit with a sophisticated heart rate sensor. And well aware that most fitness trackers are ugly, Jawbone offers a more stylish alternative with the Up.
None of these approaches involve connecting you to another human being.
Menlo Park-based GOQii thinks the answer lies in using real, live personal trainers, and crucially, it can get them for low prices by outsourcing to Mumbai, India.
GOQii gives its trackers away for free, and charges $99 for a six-month service of daily texting with a coach that analyzes users' data, and calls them once a month.
Gaming entrepreneur and GOQii founder Vishal Gondal got the idea two years ago when his own personal trainer started looking at his Fitbit data to help him set reasonable goals, and eventually set Gondal on the path to running half marathons.
Today Gondal shows off the messages from his new personal trainer, a full-time GOQii coach in Mumbai named Swapnil. Earlier this morning he texted Gondal via the GOQii app on his phone to ask how he'd slept.
'Feeling tired,' Gondal had replied. 'Should I get a Red Bull ?'
'No,' Swapnil answered, adding that Gondal should try drinking some natural carrot juice with a shot of ginger.
There's one last message from the coach: 'Did you get time [today] for a run?' Swapnil can't read Gondal's GPS data, but can see that he hasn't taken very many steps that day.
Gondal now looks sheepish. 'I haven't run so I haven't replied to the message. This is playing in my mind that I have to reply.' He stares at the message for a moment. 'Ok I'll tell him now.' Gondal's thumbs fly across his Nokia phone. 'Yes. Running tomorrow for sure,' he tells Swapnil.
It's arguably easy to brush off a coach that's thousands of miles away, but Gondal insists his coaches don't use scripts or boilerplate answers, and are encouraged to be themselves. That means they'll create a bond with their users strong enough to play on their minds, as Gondal's did. Each coach will eventually have between 100 and 150 customers to look after.
GOQii's Mumbai team of roughly 50 coaches work from 10am till 6pm in an open-plan office filled with gym equipment, organic food and spaces to do high-intensity workouts like tabata, but they spend most of their time staring a numbers and charts for user steps and calorie intake.
Each coach has a background in personal fitness and has spent around two months studying a 118-page manual with chapters on nutrition and even cognitive behavioral therapy.
From this April, they'll start coaching around 1,000 people in India, all taking part in a beta phase for GOQii. The company plans to start selling its service in the United States at the end of this year, likely for a little more than what it charges in India, and by then have hundreds of coaches.
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