Amsterdam-based Virtuagym, an online fitness platform that offers basic exercise, personal training, and tailor-made nutrition plans for users, announced on Friday that it has raised €3M in a fresh round of funding. The investment came from Icecat, an Amsterdam-based technology company which invests in innovative technology organisations.
Martijn Hoogeveen, CEO at Icecat, says, “We are happy to support Virtuagym in their plans for further health technology innovation and growth. We like the Virtuagym team and their cloud vision to help transform the health and fitness industry.”
Icecat International BV is the €25M investment fund of Icecat NV. Icecat NV has been listed on the NPEX stock exchange since 2017 and claims to be a profitable and fast-growing online publisher and syndicator of product information serving the global ecommerce market. One of Icecat’s Dutch portfolio companies, Hatch, was recently acquired by its US-based competitor, Pricespider.
Capital utilisation
Virtuagym says that the proceeds will support its international growth, with significant investment going into its all-in-one software for club management, coaching, and engagement in the health and fitness industry.
Hugo Braam, CEO and co-founder of Virtuagym, says, “The last two years have been quite challenging for our industry, but I believe our solutions have shown our customers great value, especially in making the transition towards a more hybrid, digitally-powered customer experience.”
Braam adds, “We are extremely excited and humbled by the support of Icecat with this new investment. We’re just getting started with our big plans to positively impact our industry even more, and we’ll keep working hard to help our customers with great new solutions.”
As the physical fitness industry emerges from the global pandemic, this investment represents an important point in Virtuagym’s mission to ‘make the world a healthier and happier place’.
Provider of health and fitness software
Founded in 2008 by brothers Hugo and Paul Braam, Virtuagym is a provider of health and fitness technology for coaching, engagement and management for the fitness industry and corporate wellness. The company says it is on a mission to become the number one digital fitness and health company by offering the wellness operating system: an open, modular, highly scalable, and developer-friendly platform.
Virtuagym’s platform delivers a complete ecosystem of integrated mobile apps with solutions for exercise and nutrition guidance, progress tracking, wearables, online coaching, scheduling, billing, and more.
Every startup faces some initial hiccups, and this was true for Virtuagym. The company had to figure out how to offer a solution that people will willingly pay for. “Starting out, we didn’t know gym owners and fitness enthusiasts would be our customers. We simply proceeded with a grand vision of including exercise coaching with nutrition, challenges, a community, gamification, trainer interface, etc. However, it was very difficult to sell a subscription to end-users for a digital-only service at the start. After pivoting to the B2B fitness space, we observed better traction, even though it took us 3.5 years before generating any revenue,” notes Braam.
Virtuagym now supports more than 20 million consumers, over 9,000 fitness businesses, and 45,000+ trainers worldwide, including Mrs Sporty, XSport, Fit20, Fitness Park and many more. The company has more than 200 employees across its offices in Amsterdam and the Americas.
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