There are so many micro-fitness centers in Kenya, around the Nairobi National Park, down to Kisumu Museum neighbourhoods, and towards Mombasa’s Old Town road. In fact, so many and well equipped are they that it would be difficult to make an easy choice on a hot Saturday afternoon. But not any more! A new startup has sprung up to unite them, not only across Kenya, but throughout the entirety of East Africa; and soon enough, other countries in Africa, including Nigeria. Called Manyactive and founded in December 2020 by Evalyn Oloo, the startup will give Africa’s gym goers first ever taste of an Uber-like aggregation of the nearest and best-equipped micro-gym centers and trainers. And for the micro-fitness centers, including solo trainers, the business model is all about them.
“Through a one-touch function, Manyactive enables fitness businesses to leverage the power of their social media audience to increase bookings by up to 60%,” Oloo said. “To keep motivated, the Manyactive community provides a safe area for fitness enthusiasts to share their experiences, participate in neighborhood fitness activities, and explore a variety of fitness programs and gyms in various locations. This means more reservations for trainers and small fitness businesses, as well as more money in their pockets.”
However, Manyactive’s current B2B-B2C model is not an off-the-cuff innovation. After the open launch of the product last year, Oloo and her team came to a humbling realisation: there were low number of repeat users booking gym sessions out of over 500 users that subscribed to the B2C model within 90 days of its launch.
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“After that learning, we set out on a journey to find out from our clients how best we could support them,” she said. “We then realised two things. We realised that our clients ought to be businesses — the micro-fitness businesses, which include the fitness trainers, the gym instructors, the classes, or the small gyms within the neighbourhoods, not the big-chain gyms. And so, we decided to change the business’ mission to the social mission of significantly changing the business of these micro-fitness businesses by putting them at the center of the technology that we are building.”
Armed with that learning, Oloo now believes in a new future for Manyactive.
“In the past years,” she said, “thousands of fitness apps have come up all with the mission of replacing gyms or trainers with Artificial Intelligence (AI) that help you to do, for example, twenty squats. For us, our mission is to put these micro fitness businesses at the center, give them end-to-end tools that would improve their businesses from day one.”
An Entirely New And Different Micro-fitness Aggregation Platform
According to Oloo, the new Manyactive platform, which is due for launch in September this year, allows users access to many gym-related services within the same platform.
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“The new Manyactive allows clients to make bookings as well as pay using the same platform. And when the time comes for the session to start, the trainer can start inside the app. So that they do not need to go through Zoom or other platforms. This makes their work very easy. The app also allows community members to join nearby clubs, enabling them to organise community events such as hiking, road trips, etc., better. So this is a community we have built, and it will also allow these micro businesses to get their clients from the communities. The microbusinesses can also take charge of their activities on the platform through a ladderboard,” she said.
Essentially, Manyactive’s major attractiveness for the micro-fitness businesses lies in its ability to allow access to potential fitness clients.
“If you check Instagram or Facebook, you will see a lot of trainers posting these short videos for their classes — this has even increased with COVID — but what has not increased is the returns in terms of paying clients,” she said. “So now with the new platform, instead of having to post the way they are posting on these social media channels, they just do one post on the Manyactive app and it automatically goes to these channels so that when a user clicks, it automatically brings them to a Manyactive page where they can better be converted into clients.”
Oloo said the app also has an in-built wallet system that allows for withdrawal and payment in escrow.
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She said the business makes revenue in two ways: by charging percentage on the cost of each booking.
“The second way is that we have APIs that small businesses are able to use on their websites. You use our APIs to manage attendance, manage your calendar as a trainers, and do other things. Also we have standard fees for the APIs which is $9,” she said.
Integration Within The New M-Pesa Super App
Perhaps the biggest thing for Manyactive now is that it is the only fitness app on M-Pesa’s new super app. According to Oloo, the integration will significantly assist the startup to access a larger market in East Africa.
“When we talked to them about the new dimension that we are going, they were very impressed. They like especially the social aspect of it, and the neighbourhood fitness aspect of it. This is going to help us a lot in terms of brand, especially now that M-Pesa is in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania,” she said.
Apart from East Africa, the startup also has plans to expand to other parts of Africa. Oloo said her team had intended to launch in Nigeria ahead of Kenya but for COVID.
For the purpose of onboarding the micro-fitness businesses, she noted that the startup has a strong verification system in place, including relying on random booking approach to assess the quality of services the businesses deliver.
“We are also going to increase our on-platform customer care system, leveraging on technology such as Zendesk for ticketing, etc.,” she said.
But Does Africa Really Have A Large Need For Fitness Services?
Oloo said the need is even larger than imagined.
“Post-Covid, revenue from fitness grew 53.2 percent; and it has been projected to significantly increase,” she said. “The spend on fitness is expected to reach $2 trn by 2025 in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a study by the University of Beckeley — and that is because, as the middle class expands, lifestyles will continue too change.”
Oloo who had previously worked for the World Bank noted that she discovered in one of her researches for the global organisation that fitness is still heavily fragmented across many African cities.
“For more mature markets, you find people are using API technologies such as MindBody, which is now a unicorn,” she said. “And they are not intending to come to Africa any time soon. I know this because I actually initiated conversations with them in 2016. I wanted a franchise but they were like no, this is not their market. And now they are expanding to Europe, to Asia, Singapore.”
She said Manyactive is positioning itself for 80 percent of this $2 trillion market.
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“This is possible because most businesses in fitness are micro, the individual trainers, etc. So if we do this: by 2025, for anybody to access any fitness services in Africa, they will have to go through any of our services; either through the APIs on their websites or through the mobile apps that they are using,” she said.
Also boosting her confidence in a bright future for the startup is that Africans’ spending priority would most likely change in Manyactive’s favour in the future.
“Right now,” she said, “Africans still spend about 40% of their income on food. In the coming years, you will find them spending 30% to keep themselves fit after spending 40% on food.”
So far Oloo said Manyactive has raised up to $50,000 in funding mostly from family and friends, emphasizing that the startup is currently also actively raising.
“We want to go to the grassroots and capture micro-fitness businesses,” she said.
Manyactive fitness M-Pesa Manyactive fitness M-Pesa Manyactive fitness M-Pesa Manyactive fitness M-Pesa
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer