India’s top No. 1 health and fitness startup GOQii is now a case study on the famed Harvard Business Publishing platform (subsidiary of Harvard University) that brings out books, magazines and leadership studies for MBA students.
While you may think that GOQii is like any other fitness band (that competes with the likes of Fitbit, Xiaomi’s Mi Band, Nike’s FuelBand, Jawbone and so on), there’s actually much more to it.
GOQii provides a comprehensive health service on top of its wearable device, that consists of personalized health coaches, trainers, nutritionists, behavioral psychologists, etc, who are available 24×7 to help you lead a better and healthier lifestyle.
GOQii even has diagnostic centers and hospital chains on its platform, and will soon tie up with health insurance services as well.
“Our business model is very different than the traditional hardware companies since we focus on a subscription model with much higher engagement and lifetime value. Hence, it won’t be fair to compare us to Xiaomi or Fitbit. In fact, our platform integrates with data from multiple wearable and apps,” CEO, GOQii.
The Harvard case study titled ‘Envisioning a New Fitness Future’ captures GOQii’s entire evolution from a fitness band to a complete health ecosystem. Students can expect to learn about Artificial Intelligence, Entrepreneurship, Healthcare and Technology through the GOQii case study.
GOQii retails on Amazon; the band comes bundled with a 3-month service subscription
GoQii CEO reveals how focus on ‘Wellness’ helped them dominate the Wearables market
GoQii CEO Vishal Gondal reveals what is going right for them.
- GoQii started as a company selling a smart band bundled with wellness coaching services.
have always refused to sell the bands alone. We are not a hardware company. We always wanted to sell health as a package. The biggest problem in the healthcare sector is motivation. Just a band and the app wouldn’t solve that problem.Most companies give you the hardware device and leave the fitness part on you. We, on the other hand, have a unique solution in our hand.
- Personalisation is important in fitness.
You can’t tell everyone to just run or walk for a certain amount of time. Everyone has different needs, that’s why we preferred to have a coaching service. That’s why we have 3 months of lock-in period (the company offers three subscription services — for 3, 6, and 12 months) - In the second version, GoQii offered doctor consultation, lab test tie-ups (Thyrocare labs) as they want to be a complete health solution service company. Medical records are stored in the cloud, and coaches can provide suggestions based on your medical condition. Users don’t have to pay anything extra for the consultation.
“Our doctors are paid by us. So our incentive is not to send you for numerous tests like some doctor booking platform,” says Vishal.
- GoQii connects to other services apps/services such as Apple music, Fitbit, Garmin, Withings, Strava, Runkeeper and more. The company wants to positioning itself so that other bands, smartwatches and any other brand can connect to its services.
- GoQii has partnered with Axis Bank to enable payments across over 100,000 stores in India with the band, using NFC.
In the future, GoQii might partners with health centres and even insurance providers to give out premiums at low rates. The company is even open to partnering with other manufacturers to launch the GoQii platform with their hardware.
Leave a Reply