Popular fitness tracking app company Endomondo is branching out into corporate wellness and building a new platform for employees around its Endomondo Sports Tracker app.
"Endomondo spent years refining modern technology to motivate people to be more active," Endomondo CEO Mette Lykke told MobiHealthNews in an email. "During that time, Endomondo worked with various entities to learn how the fitness social network and mobile app ‘play’ within defined communities. We’ve seen a very positive correlation between users, friends and fitness; and Endomondo now has multiple offerings and the prowess to package services at a discount for businesses large or small."
Endomondo's Employee Fitness program will cost companies $34.99 per year or $9.99 per quarter per employee. Users will have access to the premium version of Sports Tracker, which currently costs $3.99 per month for individual subscribers and includes the personal training plans Endomondo added last summer. It also offers weather information, distance tracking, calories burned, messaging with colleagues, and a historical reference of workouts.
In addition, the Employee Fitness program will offer special corporate features. Companies will be able to make a customized corporate page only accessible by their employees. There, employees can access special challenges, routes and events set up by their employer, talk in a community forum, or read and share news on a company news feed. The program also includes a back-end analytics engine for the company, giving employers access to weekly distance, duration or calories of employees or the impact of specific challenges and campaigns. They can also integrate the module with their existing Google Analytics account for the company website.
"Through Endomondo, businesses can construct engaging activities that accommodate novices or fitness fanatics," Lykke wrote. "And because Endomondo is not a ‘closed’ service, users can reach out to friends or family and construct their own fitness communities."
Endomondo, which makes free GPS-based tracking apps, boasts nearly 20 million users, up from 16 million last August. The Danish company, founded in 2007, has raised about $3 million from SEED Capital and angel investors. Endomondo has always had a strong focus on social interaction for its users. Lykke told MobiHealthNews that the employee offering does not represent a change in the central focus of the company.
"Endomondo’s Employee Fitness offering does not change our focus or strategy one bit," she said. "We’ll continue to utilize new tech developments to build a better platform, and we’ll still offer all we can to everyone. Companies consist of persons, and each person has a right to fitness no matter how long the workday. The Employee Fitness solution simply provides a way for companies to promote fitness within a social realm perhaps already existing within an organization, or develop a social connectivity perhaps missing from an organization."
