Khyati Mahajan – Founder and CEO, Mevofit
With the aim of creating a fitness solution that covers all major aspects and bridge the gap between technology and user demands, Mevofit has recently launched a fitness watch Mevofit Thrust. It is a fitness technology startup of unique apps and web that reward you with merchandise to lose weight and get fit. Launched in 2015, the brand has developed an all in one health management ecosystem. Their fitness gear includes fitness tracker bands, fitness smartwatches, gym bags and Bluetooth headphones. Mevofit CEO Khyati Mahajan, in a conversation with Pahi Mehra, spills the beans about her passion for staying fit and her will to promote a healthy lifestyle among others through her brand.
What was the inspiration behind launching Mevofit? Going back to our background, we belong to mobile software business. We have been developing mobile applications since 2004 ever since Symbian and Jawa was there. We were developing applications for manufacturers like Nokia and Samsung they were used to pretty much appoint the devices. Our apps used to be more of utility applications, so we always had known about the technology and app software was our forte. There was a time when a lot of health applications launched. I started following a few and then by using those different apps for a very long time, I realized that it creates a fatigue because there is separate app for each and every feature so that’s how I got inspired, we have known the technology and how we can develop a software for health app like that and was always inclined towards health and fitness
because that was the period when health and fitness just started booming. So, that’s how we started Mevofit.
Are you a fitness buff? Yes I am. It’s like a compulsion nowadays, you cannot ignore. I like to work out but due to my schedule probably sometimes I would not get as much time but earlier when I was young, I used to be a complete freak, now that profession has set some liabilities that I have to follow, I have a time crunch but whenever I have time, I would spend 2 hours in my gym that would be my best stress buster. So I’m a fitness buff for sure.
What kind of products and apps you used before launching Mevofit? Before launching! So, there was this very interesting app called My Fitness Pal so that was the first
app that launched calorie tracking. You can know the calories from what you eat so that was interesting but it was just calories. Then I used Endomondo app for running but again that was only for running. When you are following fitness, everyday you can’t run, every day cannot go to a gym. You cannot only follow food, you have to exercise also. So, there was a need of an app like Mevofit that has a combination each and every fitness genre and that’s how we are successful.
You have a website called Mevolife. What kind of research did you do before launching it? Mevolife was a website for basically health articles. So we launched Mevolife with health articles. We had writer, health experts writing for our blog from across the globe. That was Mevolife and then we moved on app and hardware we shifted our
user base to our Mevofit.
What was the response initially? Very well! Lots and lots of users liked us and we have lots of social media followers also. If you see our Facebook and Instagram, there are a good number of followers following us and they always interested to know what next we are doing because we are constantly upgrading ourselves.
How do you keep your users engaged with your app? It’s very interesting because if you talk about Indian Consumers, they want everything for free. So, the USP of our app has been our Mevofit credits. Every time the user gets into the app, they will have reward points and those points are not just reward points but economy for when they buy products from our store and we have an in-app shop in the Mevofit app. The credit points are as good as 60% discount and it’s a physical product so users are now realizing that with fitness they are getting something so it’s like a win- win situation for the user. We also have a lot of engagement in our app, with our in act community (social community), where users can discuss about their problems around the globe and get connected. We also have challenges, in which you get reward points with every winning challenge. Our focus is always on and fun engagement for user experience and interest.
You have a variety of Active Gadgets, so how are they different from other gadgets in the industry? If I have to differentiate my brand from the others, first would be the software and the engagement part because all the other gadgets and brands have a normal app that will let you know what you did yesterday and what you’re doing today, nothing else. We have diet plans, recipes. Also we have a fun feature called juice maker wherein you can make your juice and know the calories. All this kind of gamification is not included in those apps so probably that makes our hardware very unique because along with that we are getting a lot of other things in terms of the app and if I have to talk of the branding of particular gadget how it is different from others, we have a normal steps tracker than we have a dedicated tracker for health which is called ECG tracker. Than we have swim series specially dedicated for swimmers, we have a special gadget for runners also, than we have a complete smart watch so these are like smart bands in the design of a watch. Recently you launched Mevofit Thrust Fitness Watch, how is it different and who all can benefit from this product? Basically, it allows you to track your heart rate, blood pressure and ECG. As a normal consumer, we don’t have any idea how your ECG should be, so it will denote through the red and green lines that if there is green you’re ok and that has been discuss with the experts and then put it in an app. and also you can share your reports with the doctors from the app. For a user on a regular basis it is enough to track your health. If someone is having some heart issues and cardio issues at least primarily they can know and can get it checked by being in app and using the hardware. And it’s a very good looking watch so even if you are not following a particular feature even as accessorize is looks and looks really smart and we have like 3 different colors: blue, red and black. So even as a normal fashion accessory, you can carry it really well.
Your company is based in US, so what kind of difference you feel is there in terms of business in Indian and American market? So, we started in the US but our tech teams were always in India. As mentioned, we started with the blog, articles. At that time, the majority of readers and consumers used to be US. And when we launched the app, the premium majority users were from the US. Indian consumer market is a free market where consumer’s wants free stuff, but they understand hardware a lot more than software. It was only software and we used to focus more on the US but then India being a huge market and the numbers being really big, you cannot match up with that. So that’s how our focus shifted to India and towards the Indian consumers. When we launched the hardware, we thought India is the first market to begin with, but that doesn’t stop us to sell our gadgets in US and UK. It takes a little time because there is logistics and everything that needs to be taken care of but we are for sure going to launch ourselves in the US. If you talk about hardware, India has always been a good market.
Do you have any future plans or new gadgets coming out? We are planning to come up with a full touch smart watch. We always want our consumers to get benefited in terms of health. We just don’t want to sell our hardware that once we sell, they forget us. We are launching an expert platform where experts like dieticians and the fitness trainers can get the leverage of selling their expert services to our consumers through our app. And along with that there is a plan to launch our product market place also, where we let the other vendors who are into health and fitness equipment’s sell on our platform. We basically want to be Uber of fitness. ■