In an Interview with Mr. Ketan Mavinkurve reveals that How this Tech – Enabled Platform Alpha Coach ensures Fitness
CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mr. Ketan Mavinkurve is the founder and CEO of Alpha Coach
- Please provide a brief overview of the company, its areas of expertise, and its services.
Alpha Coach is a Consumer SaaS fitness brand focussing on nutrition & fitness coaching that is curated for an Indian audience. The application provides hyper-personalized plans built for busy individuals and helps them lose weight at their own pace, through a combination of mindful eating & food logging, and activity goals.
The app is powered by AI/ML models that create custom macro-diet plans, decode your metabolism (patent pending), automatic weekly plan adjustments, and activity & compliance tracking, through our proprietary Daily Alpha Score algorithm.
- The rise of fitness enthusiasts through technology
Amid the pandemic, it is no surprise that technology has increasingly found its way into fitness routines. Consumer mindsets have significantly changed, and gym-goers are more proactive than ever about their overall wellness, encompassing everything from exercise, healthy eating, mindfulness, and sleep.
Fitness apps have been around much before the pandemic, but the shift is now more pronounced from both perspectives: the consumer (gym-goers/ fitness enthusiasts) and the service providers (gyms/trainers.)
Fitness apps have seen a meteoric rise during the pandemic demonstrating just how popular fitness has become; as a result, people are now always on the lookout for solutions that is science-backed, seamlessly adaptable to them, and easy on the pocket.
- What are some of the industry’s current issues?
Getting fit is not an easy task – and it’s not made any easier with the significant amount of information out there. These countless articles citing new strategies, fads, training techniques, and “secret diets” have created a problem of decision fatigue and not knowing what to do.
This is perpetuated by the rise of social media which has made sharing and collaboration more effortless than ever before, without factual support.
Add to that, most of these online diet plans are purely template-based and lack any personalization. These lead people to fall off the wagon due to a lack of motivation & results, on account of injuries.
Professionals know that there’s not a “one-size-fits-all” in fitness – but that is rarely sold. Whether it’s a paleo/keto diet, or high-intensity interval training/spin classes, trainers and brands claim that their approach is the best.
In reality, what works is having a plan that’s designed for you, being mindful & deliberate in its execution (eating smartly, being active, getting rest), and a certain degree of accountability & engagement that lead people to stay the course long enough to see great results!
- What are your future plans for the market? What growth plans do you have for the coming year? What are 5-year plans of the company?
Evolve has already crossed 1 lakh downloads, and is on track now to hit 10 lakhs by next year. In our current data set, we are already seeing impressive engagement and people already showing weight loss results in just a matter of weeks. We plan to grow this platform 10x in the next one year, and thereafter take larger strides into the fitness industry. We have some interesting features and modules coming, which will allow us to take our nutrition & fitness to a whole new level.
- What is your financial situation? How do you intend to spend the current funds?
We have some ambitious plans on how we intend to scale this up over the next 12-18 months – funds will be mainly used towards brand building, use-acquisition, as well building out more technology. We’re especially excited to build products that are genuinely customised to individuals and allow them to go along their fitness journeys on their own terms!
- What products and services does Alpha Coach provide?
We have launched the Alpha Coach Evolve, a 100% free automated diet-coaching app. While many apps promise custom-built plans, our patent-pending algorithm uses adaptive intelligence to create custom diet plans, and gives users an activity goal, depending on the pace they choose to do their program. It also calculates your metabolism and makes weekly adjustments, based on food & weight logs.
The app’s voice-enabled food logging and access to a robust, verified database of 18,000 Indian foods, makes it the fastest food-logging experience in India. While the app is 100% free to download, its premium food recommendations upgrade (coming in Jan 2023) will also be inexpensive and affordable.
We also provide one-to-one coaching to companies via our Wellness at Work coaching program. Using a team of qualified personal coaches, we design fitness programs that employees love, provide them with engagement via leaderboards and incentivize them to get fitter – this is done by focusing on all 3 aspects: Exercise, Nutrition, and Habit coaching. We launched this last year, and have already helped multiple organizations turn their company into a Fit Workplace.
- Explain EVOLVE – a free diet-coaching application that uses Adaptive Intelligence that you have recently launched.
Alpha Coach Evolve is a boon for all those who want to manage their weight but cannot stick to rigid diet programs. Being a Chartered Accountant and working in the financial services space for 23+ years before founding Alpha Coach, I understand first-hand how inhibitive and difficult it can be for busy professionals to get started on a fitness journey. This app does everything for you – from helping you build an initial program to making weekly adjustments. It’s like having a coach watching over you all the time. It requires under 5 minutes a day to log all your meals. With the free app, anyone can start their nutrition program immediately and start seeing progress within a matter of a few weeks.
While the app it creates Evolve is one of the fastest food-logging apps and comes with an adaptive intelligence engine that helps users make the best food choices based on their metabolism. The application uses AI/ML technologies that account for user habits, lifestyles, eating preferences, activity tracking, and also adapts to users over time. The algorithm also predicts a timeline for the user to reach their body-weight goals, following the recommended plan. With a goal-based approach, Alpha Coach Evolve helps users lose weight, gain weight, or maintain weight.
The patent-pending algorithm that backs the application is the first of its kind that calculates the users’ metabolism based on their food and body-weight logs. Then, based on the daily food and weight logs, the system automatically makes program adjustments for the users every week. It also seamlessly integrates with multiple wearables via Google Fit, enabling activity tracking.
The key highlight of the app is the “Daily Alpha Score” – a clear indicator of the program’s compliance. In addition, the application guarantees result in the predicted timeline if the user scores a Daily Alpha Score above 70 every day.
What makes Alpha Coach unique is its insights and recommendations using data, which makes it customized to every individual. The closest analogy would be a family doctor, who knows your entire medical history, and hence, becomes the best professional to diagnose your issues and provide the best solutions that will work for you. It’s the same with Alpha Coach Evolve, while there are other apps claiming to be “the best”, they are usually generic; on the hand, Alpha Coach will become the best app “for you”.
The response to Alpha Coach Evolve has been encouraging, as we have >100K downloads within a span of 2 months.
The app is currently available on Google PlayStore, and the iOS version will be launched in November 2022.
