Boston-based weight loss app company Lose It! says it plans to take its service international some time in 2015, according to a report in Boston Business Journal. The company's app currently counts 24 million users in the US and Canada, but new markets, including Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand are among those that could go live this year.
Notably, earlier this year Under Armour acquired Endomondo for $85 million in an effort to ensure its digital business has a strong international footprint. Around the same time Under Armour also acquired MyFitnessPal, which doubled its user based from 40 million in 2013 to 80 million in early 2015, after launching internationally.
Last fall a small study conducted by researchers at Arizona State University found that the Lose It! app helped people to stay on their weight loss program, even if it didn't necessarily help them lost more weight.
“While no difference in weight loss was noted between the three groups, we found that participants who monitored their diet with either an application or the memo function on a smartphone were more likely to persist in the study and missed fewer days of entering dietary data, compared to those monitoring via paper and pencil,” lead author Christopher Wharton, associate professor of nutrition at ASU’s School of Nutrition and Health Promotion, said at the time. “This may be due to ease of use.”
Lose It! has been in the headlines a few times already this year. Just last week Lose It!'s app was mentioned as an integrated feature in the Apple ResearchKit-enabled app, GlucoSuccess, developed by Massachusetts General Hospital. The company's branded weight scale is among a handful of partner devices for sale on Jawbone's recently launched digital health store.
Lose It! has raised about $7 million to date, from investors that include CEO Charles Teague's former employer General Catalyst Partners and health insurer UnitedHealthcare. Teague told the BBJ that since the company is profitable it has no plans to raise additional funding. He also disclosed that the number of users who pay for Lose It!'s $39.99-a-year premium service is now in the "hundreds of thousands", up from tens of thousands a year ago.
