Startup Spotlight: Social Boat

Startup Spotlight is an interview series where we ask health, fitness and wellness startups that use Terra, to share their wisdom from their own journey to success and also where they see fitness data going in the future.

In this Spotlight, we connected with Swapnil Vats, cofounder of Social Boat, the real-life fitness game that motivates people to work out and get fit. Social Boat is designed to fix the gratification problem in fitness - when we work out, we don't experience the rewards immediately. Read more about it below!

Describe your company:

Swapnil Vats (SV):

Social Boat is a real-life fitness game that helps you get fit but also motivates you to work out. The fundamental challenge with working out is that, unless you have a lot of intrinsic motivation, it is not a very fun thing to do.

150 million people globally every year pay $400 annually for fitness, but they drop off within a month, two weeks, or even a week. This is 80% of the total 184 million people that go to the gym. The industry has a fundamental retention problem. That is what we are trying to solve.

This problem is very prominent with YouTubers and other online personalities - I can watch one Youtuber's content then watch another tomorrow. If we look at video games, they're so popular today and we love playing video games because there is instant gratification. Everything else that happens around our lives is giving us instant gratification, but in fitness, the gratification cycle is too weak. It happens in a month, or a few weeks at best. This is what we are trying to address - we are making a game that gives you gratification immediately and bringing in influencers and other online personalities. Ultimately, you will be able to play fitness games, and transform your body at the same time.

The games are team-based and often creator-led - by influencers, or led by anybody. When people compete in challenges they earn points and they compete on leaderboards with their friends. This creates digital fitness levels for your own virtual avatar which can eventually reach the ‘Olympian' level after a lot of training.

We are trying to build fitness games that can give you gratification to the same degree as, say, scoring your first goal in Fifa.

What we have on our platform is multiple fitness games with different types of universes. For example, we have the fat burner universe, the runners' universe, the yoga universe, and many more that we're building. There are games within these universes that have multiple tasks that people can do to earn points.

What sort of technology do you use today?

We use a diverse range of technology and manual operations. We leverage Terra also to connect users' wearables. Close to 45% of our users have devices connected through Terra and we use the information from their wearables to award them points for activities that they've done. The rest of our users do video-based tasks to earn points through Instagram reels, TikTok, and other video recording methods, and through these ‘bite-sized' workouts we get a lot of analytical information on the users.

You mentioned that you also involve influencers on the platform.

That's right! We also have a very creator-economy product on one side. Social Boat is built on two core pillars. Firstly, that fitness should have very fast gratification. Secondly, I care when someone close to me, such as a friend, is getting fit - that is relatable to me. The team construct adds the accountability aspect to working out which is important to work out.

The sweet spot of Instagram influencers for us are those with between 5,000 and 30,000 followers who have very engaged and finite users who would love to join a video with them and would love to workout with them. These creators or health coaches will then come and customize the game based on what your preferences are. For example, there could be a game called the ‘Fat Burner' game - as a coach I could customize it for you so that it meets your skill level when it might not be achievable for others.

The platform right now has high levels of engagement - the average user on Social Boat spends 50 minutes to 55 minutes every day on the platform and we still have to launch a mobile app. With users spending this time on the platform they aggressively track what everybody else is doing, everybody is really interested in keeping up with their friends' performances.

How did you come up with the idea?

SV:

During the pandemic, Rahul and I ran a travel company. Obviously, it wasn't great timing, so we decided we'd look at other ideas. At the time we were also tracking who was doing how many steps per day, competing with the flatmates with bets and we put together a Whatsapp group to track all of this. Also, we had spent a lot of time in the creator economy with our previous venture and so we understood the space well and what the challenges were there. We spoke to our creator friends and fitness influencers and found that the fundamental problem is not "Are people signing up to my program?" but instead is "Are people attending my program every day?". Because people get bored after the first week. So, this is what we set out to solve - to create something that would not just encourage people to engage in fitness challenges but to commit to it too.

What have been some of the biggest challenges you've faced so far?

SV:

Our most difficult challenge has been solved by Terra - how do we bring in all this data? If we had to go to each individual data provider, this would be a huge task. We needed to think about how to quantify what we are building, and this is what Terra is helping us to solve. There is a bit of delay with the data, but we are looking forward to it coming in ASAP. We're also using AI-based technology and tracking such as GPT-3 technology.

Fitness can be as fun as playing video games in the evening. It needs to be quantified sharply and at a standardized level for everybody.

What do you think are the current gaps in health data today?

SV:

The first major gap is that there is no standardization in the data that comes through wearable devices - for example, the calorie count from doing a workout with an Apple Watch, Fitbit, Garmin, etc there is still a 20% or 30% error. Finding a way to standardize this would really help our platform by ensuring that the points that people are awarded for challenges are consistent across devices.

Another gap with wearable data is that it doesn't come immediately, it often comes at a 15–20 minute lag. People want gratification right away, rather than after they've showered and changed clothes and had a smoothie. People are not used to waiting and wanting to see their results right away.

What will Social Boat look like in 2–3 years' time?

SV:

We are building Social Boat so that it encourages people to go to the gym by making it more fun. We want to provide access to sports and health coaches across the world. We want our users to be able to work with a Kung Fu coach in China, for example, or a swimming coach in Bulgaria. The opportunities are endless and we want to connect everybody globally whilst allowing them to enjoy fitness.