[Funding Alert] Digital Fitness Startup TREAD Raises $1.1 Mn In Seed Round The startup will use these funds for scaling its product development and community expansion
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Bengaluru-based digital fitness startup TREAD has raised its first round of funding of $1.1 million from a clutch of investors. The round saw participation from Better Capital, Unacademy founders Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh, Udaan founder Sujeet Kumar, CRED founder Kunal Shah, Citruspay founder Amrish Rau, MPL founders Sai Srinivas and Shubh Malhotra, Jupiter founder Jitendra Gupta, RedBus founder Phanindra Sama, Whiteboard Capital, FirstCheque and Stanford Angels, among others.
"The company promises to deliver live streamed group workout sessions through its mobile app and website. Fitness experts across the country will use the platform to deliver a wide range of workouts, counts as yoga, HIIT (high-intensity interval training) and cardio with strength and conditioning workouts," said a statement from the company.
"We are excited to announce our first ever fundraise for TREAD, a visionary homegrown online fitness startup that aims to advance the "Fit India' initiative by offering holistic workouts which are accessible and affordable to everyone in India and in Bharat. This fundraise gives us the initial capital to rapidly build out our product, our content across social platforms and to onboard thousands of professional trainers from across the country," said TREAD founder and chief executive officer Dinesh Godara. "Our immediate goal is to launch an immersive and gamified experience for users to choose their workouts and make consistent progress on their fitness goals."
Data from MoEngage shows that between the first quarter and the second quarter of 2020, health and fitness app downloads grew by 46 per cent worldwide whereas India saw the highest increase in downloads, rising by 156 per cent that translates to 58 million new active users.
"In this post-COVID world, people are cautious about social distancing and are hesitant to head back to the gyms and fitness centers. Workout from home has become a new normal in fitness around the world. TREAD is squarely positioned around this need and is offering the full range of workouts via online sessions with best-of-breed trainers across all categories."
"TREAD is building a rich experience for users to pick up workouts, find trainers of their choice and compete with their peers, and track progress via a gamified dashboard. TREAD is also creating rich tools for trainers to conduct highly engaging group workout sessions where users feel connected to their trainers similar to their offline experience" Godara added, while pointing to the current opportunities and way forward for the establishment.
"The startup is in talks with multiple venture capital firms for its Series A round of funding," said the statement.
A report by Data Bridge Market Research on the fitness app market said the fitness app market is expected to witness market growth at a rate of 21.3 per cent in the forecast period of 2020 to 2027.
