Miami — It seems like every week Gympass adds another fitness opportunity to its directory. Last week it was bike rentals in São Paulo, today it’s the acquisition of Trainiac, a personal training startup based in Seattle. Gympass, which allows employees to access a multitude of studios and fitness apps, originated in Brazil in 2012, but has since become a global company and is now headquartered in New York. Gympass offers its services in 10 countries around the world, and is always compulsively adding wellness programs to its app.
“Our goal is to provide the options to make people feel good, and whenever we find a product that does that, we try to partner with them or work with them in some way,” said César Carvalho, the company’s co-founder and CEO.
Gympass is one of the companies that has benefited from the pandemic. In May 2020, it added personal trainers to its roster, and experienced significant growth. The pandemic had just started, and was already lasting longer than expected, and the world went into a wellness craze. Some people wanted to stay in shape to fight off the virus, while others, unable to go to the gym, needed options to exercise from their own homes. Gympass was eager to become the solution. Earlier this year the company raised another $220 million in Series E funding and Carvalho said that in 2021 the company has experienced 8%-12% growth month over month, and is now valued at $2.2 billion.
Gympass boasts “50,000 fitness partners, 1,300 on-demand classes, 2,000 hours of meditation, weekly 1:1 therapy sessions, and hundreds of personal trainers,” the company said in a statement. As a corporate wellness company, individuals can’t sign-up for Gympass. People can only get access to it through an employee benefit offered by their employer.
But Traniac is more than just personal training. The company, which will now be called Trainiac by Gympass, offers certified coaches that work with you to build a wellness program. Yes you can train with them one-on-one, but that’s not really the point. The trainers serve as a wellness coach, designing workouts for you, keeping you on track, and even counting your calories burnt for the week. As a result, Trainiac trainers get people to exercise more, on average, Carvalho said.
“The average person that works out with a trainer does 8 workouts a month, and with Trainiac people do 17,” Carvalho attested. “On average, more than 60% of the users work out more than 3 times per week,” he added. “The best KPI is the number of workouts that people do.”
While those numbers are impressive, the cost/benefit is pretty incredible, too. In the U.S. a personal training session can cost about $100 (or more if you go to a fancy gym like Equinox), but Trainiac was able to offer them at $99.99 per month, and Gympass is making that number even more affordable.
“Imagine offering a program like that, where the person is tracking you, for $45/month. It doesn’t exist,” said César Carvalho.