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StepSetGo Success Story
The benefits of fitness go on and on, but you need consistency and discipline in order to stick with a routine long enough to reap those benefits. That’s where technology can help. The right app can act as a virtual personal trainer or training partner to keep you motivated and accountable. Running and jogging help to build strong bones, as it is a weight-bearing exercise, strengthen your muscles, improve cardiovascular fitness, burn plenty of kilojoules and help you maintain a healthy weight.
StepSetGo is one such health and fitness app that lets people earn coins after every walk, which they can redeem in the in-app store for free products or discounts. StepSetGo app aims to get people out of the workout rut by incentivizing the process of walking. PM Modi also recognized this fitness app in his Mann ki Baat address.
StepSetGo- Company Highlights
- Company Name-StepSetGo
- Headquarter-Mumbai
- Founders-Shivjeet Ghatge, Misaal Turakhia, and Abhay Pai
- Founded-January 2019
- Sector- Health & Fitness
- Parent Company-Pepkit Media Pvt. Ltd
- Website-www.stepsetgo.com
StepSetGo - About and How it Works
With StepSetGo, founders wanted to make fitness simple, engaging, fun, and get as many people as possible to take up the challenge without asking them to do too much. So, walking was something that they knew they could use as an instigator to get users to get moving. It is something that they regularly do, all they needed to do was track it, institute a rewarding system, and make it social.
How StepSetGo works is simple; the app tracks everything from users’ steps, calories lost to the kilometers walked. It then converts those steps into SSG coins which is the currency used to redeem offers from the in-app marketplace called the ‘Bazaar’. Users can earn 1 SSG coin for every thousand steps they take. While fairly simple, earning these coins is purely dependent on the user’s diligence and persistence towards getting those steps in daily.
Once enough coins are accumulated, the user can reward his/her progress with gadgets, apparel, online courses, wellness products, and even bikes from the Bazaar section of the app. StepSetGo has taken things one step further, by heightening the engagement and motivation by introducing a healthy dose of friendly competition through the ‘Arena’ section in the app. There, users can compete with family and friends to reach specific goals, which ultimately encourages the building of healthier communities.
There is no limit to the number of coins a user can collect but limitations are only determined by each individual and also there are daily limitations. Therefore the longer your commitment to fitness is, the more rewards you can earn with StepSetGo. This simple yet viral concept has, in the last two years building its registered user base to nearly 7 Million.
StepSetGo Tools
JIRA, Confluence, Asana, Slack, Whatsapp Web are the few tools StepSetGo uses to ensure business continuity and seamlessness. Additionally, they've invested in an Atlassian suite for better communication within the team.
StepSetGo - Industry
2020 has been an extremely transformational year for the fitness industry. The almost overnight churn of traditional to virtual has not only had an impact on the responsiveness of the industry to adapt and evolve but also has molded a new generation of fitness enthusiasts. This new generation has finally been given enough nudges towards making that long-term commitment to their fitness journey and is seeking more accessible means to achieve it. Apps, virtual training, gamification with a combination of traditional offline solutions will chart out the next few years of the industry.
StepSetGo - Founders
StepSetGo was founded by Shivjeet Ghatge, Misaal Turakhia, and Abhay Pai.
Abhay, Misaal, and Shivjeet have been friends for a while and they’ve always wanted to work together on something they could call their own. Sports and fitness are shared passions and the trio always knew they wanted to create the next big thing in the Indian fitness space. They all come from varied backgrounds, which came together perfectly to build and launch StepSetGo. Abhay Pai
Abhay Pai is the Co-founder and CTO at StepSetGo. He holds an M.Tech degree and specializes in building high-scale technology solutions while heading the engineering team that develops, manages, and maintains all server-side infrastructures. He is also involved actively in the development and optimizations of the iOS and Android mobile apps for StepSetGo. While working with high scale tech-driven companies like IBM and BookMyShow, Abhay learned quickly what goes into building and scaling up a platform - which made him the perfect fit at StepSetGo. Misaal Turakhia
Misaal Turakhia is a Co-founder and CPO at StepSetGo. With a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from NMIMS and a Master’s degree in Advanced Computer Science from the University of Leicester, Misaal handles the technical aspects of the product, UI & UX, as well as app development. After switching from a leadership position at Fork Media, Misaal developed a logistics app for his father’s spice trading business, which received a lot of attention and instigated his drive to pursue the next big thing. Watching his father run his own business gave him the inspiration to start his own entrepreneurial journey and that came into motion through StepSetGo. Shivjeet Ghatge
Shivjeet Ghatge is a Co-founder and CEO at StepSetGo. As CEO, he looks after the finances, marketing, and business development for the platform, which are the areas of his core competence. After graduating from Grenoble Ecole de Management with a degree in international business, he began his journey as a working professional with some extremely reputable agencies like Duval Guillaume, a prominent and well-known advertising agency in Belgium, Publicis Paris, Umbrella Design, and Grey Worldwide. Working with these companies helped him hone his skills in brand marketing and business development, which eventually led him to start his own consulting agency. Working with this new generation of go-getters who were determined to go off the beaten path, in a direction that had not been explored by their predecessors inspired him to do the same.
What started out as a three-person setup, out of a friend's father’s office space, has now grown to a 32-member team. StepSetGo’s team comprises young, vivacious individuals who work dedicatedly to make the platform reach newer heights in the least amount of time possible. The success of StepSetGo is a joint and collective ambition.
StepSetGo - Startup Story | How was StepSetGo Founded?
Misaal, Abhay, and Shivjeet have always had a passion for fitness, and they knew that was the space they wanted to be in. While the trio went through multiple concepts that went from the idea board to the actual business plan, they knew that they still hadn’t found a hook that would set them apart from the rest. This was when, during a seemingly innocent conversation about their sporadic workout regimens that involved spurts of rigorous workouts with bouts of none at all, Abhay mentioned that if they got paid to exercise, they’d take their commitment to fitness a lot more seriously. That was when StepSetGo was born.
When they were about six months in, at the starting of 2019, they were hesitant about pushing its concept out into the market. After a lot of R&D and testing within their own social circles, they knew that they needed an unbiased sample size in order to get honest and actual feedback. So, they decided to take the leap and on 10th January 2019, they launched the application and did a dipstick at the NMIMS College in Bombay with the students there. Little did they know that by the end of the day StepSetGo would have 200 new registrations and by March 2019, they would be up to about 55,000+ new user registrations.
Their dipstick at NMIMs college launched their first 200 users and from there on their concept has only further catapulted their brand awareness. In the first three months StepSetGo had reached almost 55,000+ registered users a day and today StepSetGo has clocked a total registered users base of nearly 7 million through organic routes.
As people used StepSetGo and saw individuals in their immediate circles reap the rewards, proof of concept was established and ultimately created an almost viral momentum for StepSetGo. Today, the platform has turned into a dinner-table conversation for users and their families.
The organic following StepSetGo acquired a loyal user base that loves using the application, and this helped them cross nearly 7 million registered users in just 20 months. That was a huge accomplishment for them because it was then that they realized that they had a unique concept that had a sense of virality built into it.
StepSetGo - Vision and Mission
The ideation and final launch of StepSetGo involved an immense amount of market research. From their research, they found that there are about 400 million people who were conscious of getting fit. However, only about 45 million were actually doing anything about it. Therefore, their goal was to reach those 350 million or so people and find a way to create something that would not just get them to begin a commitment to their fitness journey or goals but ensure it was a long-term one.
With that in mind and with a joint vision to build a fitter community, they came together to build a platform that would incentivize its users to make a long-term commitment to their fitness journey by providing them with immediate rewards.
StepSetGo - Name, Logo and Tagline
StepSetGo is all about getting started with one’s fitness journey, so they wanted to translate that concept to something that had a lot of energy behind it. The phrases Ready-Set-Go or Get-Set-Go were easy connections for them, considering that, that's what one says at the start of a competition or race. So, they started to toy with terms that would be a call to action and had a concept of movement to it. That’s how StepSetGo was coined.
StepSetGo - Business and Revenue Model
The StepSetGo funding is provided by Huddle and ESV. Also, the StepSetGo revenue model as of today is through ad networks like Google, AdMob, and Facebook Audience Network as well as brand partnerships.
StepSetGo - Growth
The initial growth highlights can be summed up by StepSetGo's social media following, which are:
- Instagram - 1,38,000+ Followers
- Facebook - 79,294+ people like this
- Twitter - 5,162+ Followers
- LinkedIn - 2,082+ Followers
StepSetGo - Customers/Clients Acquisition
‘Word of mouth has been its most powerful tool to make a name of StepSetGo in an incredibly cluttered market. Their strategy was very simple i.e. reward users for walking and the concept spoke for itself. In fact, their referral campaign is what has helped them really escalate the momentum at which they grew, because it gave users an easy way to build their SSG coins piggy bank by just getting more people to not just join but start walking and complete a minimum of 5000 steps. Additionally, at the beginning of the lockdown, since it was mandated for people to stay at home, they even instituted an indoor walking rewards system to continue to motivate and incentivize their users to keep up their progress.
Apart from that, marketing hasn’t played a very pivotal role in StepsetGo’s growth, however introducing new gamification features and avenues through which users can interact with social circles, at consistent intervals is what has helped keep things engaging. To enhance the appeal, they've collaborated with leading brands like Bajaj Avenger, Bewakoof, Skechers, Puma, and Decathlon among others to reward their users for making an effort to stay fit.
StepSetGo - Partnerships
StepSetGo has seen partnerships, among which the partnership with Symbo on April 28, 2022, is the latest one. The collaboration with Symbo Insurance, a leading insurtech firm, aims to launch a one-of-a-kind health insurance. This health insurance will be available on the app of the award-winning health and fitness industry disruptor, StepSetGo (SSG), which will also help the users earn cashback on their premium. This will make StepSetGo foray into the new segment of insurance. SSG, thus, will not only take care of the health of the users but also insure their health in real-time. This SSG insurance in partnership with Symbo will be cost-friendly, effective, and unique in nature.
The incentives that StepSetGo will likely offer will be awarded as monthly cashback, where the users would be able to earn back a maximum of 25% of the price of the premium by meeting their step goals. For instance, if someone completes 60,000 steps in a month, 2000 steps daily on an average, then he/she will be able to earn a minimum of 10% cashback. Thus, if he/she wants to claim 25% cashback, then 4,50,000 steps must be completed per month, which will make 15,000 steps daily on an average. The users can, in this way, keep track of the total steps they have completed, and the cashback they have earned. This will help them stay motivated and consistent.
StepSetGo - Challenges
The challenge was creating an application that was easy to use for everyone. The founders had to keep in mind the policies required for both Android and iOS systems. Their motive was to target anyone with a smartphone who could understand the concept and smoothly use the app. Building an application for the masses is tougher than it sounds even when one has a great idea.
StepSetGo - Marketing Strategy
StepSetGo’s one and only marketing strategy have been ‘word of mouth’, which was only made possible by a simple concept but had a unique added concept of customer-centric engagement at its core. It helped them get their first 200 users and has continued to help them grow their base to almost 7 million today.
StepSetGo - Competitors
Some of StepSetGo’s competitors are
- Curefit
- BurnCal
- Cadoo
- Abvio
StepSetGo - Recognitions and Achievements
StepSetGo recently won the Atmanribhar Bharat Innovation Challenge under the health & fitness category.
PM Modi also recognized this fitness app in his Mann ki Baat address.
StepSetGo - Future Plans
Userbase: over 7 million registered users
Notable client: The app has also collaborated with leading brands like Bajaj Avenger, Bewakoof, Skechers, Puma, and Decathlon among others
As per Similarweb’s data, StepSetGo ranks second after the Aarogya Setu app in terms of user engagement under India's free apps’ category. StepSetGo is completely bootstrapped and is less than 2 years old. More than 95% of all of StepSetGo’s users are organically acquired. In September, StepSetGo entered the top 50 free apps under the Indian 'all' category and reached the #2 spot in India under the 'health and fitness category.
There will be more fitness-oriented features that go beyond just walking. More of the gamification that you already see on the app, to keep people motivated. Additionally, there will be quite a few features that are coming up in the bazaar section that is just around the corner.
FAQs
What is StepSetGo?
StepSetGo is fitness the app tracks everything from users’ steps, calories lost to the kilometers walked. It then converts those steps into SSG coins which is the currency used to redeem offers from the in-app marketplace called the ‘Bazaar’. Users can earn 1 SSG coin for every thousand steps they take.
How does StepSetGo earn money?
At the moment, StepSetGo gets its revenue from advertisements, which the users can choose to watch to earn coins but a user can earn only up to four coins per day through this.
Who is the founder of Step Set Go?
Shivjeet Ghatge, Misaal Turakhia, and Abhay Pai are the founders of StepSetGo.
Is StepSetGo a Chinese app?
No, StepSetGo is an Indian app headquartered in Mumbai.