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Bangalore based Housejoy acquires mobile fitness Startup Orobind

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Amazon India-backed on-demand home services startup Housejoy has acquired Orobind, an ‘at-home’ personal fitness tech startup. The financial aspects of the deal are still not disclosed.

Founded in 2014 by Satya Vyas and Shubhanshu Srivastava, Orobind is a mobile marketplace of fitness coaches that assigns experts based on the user’s location, preferred workout time, and preferred workout days. Prior to subscribing, it allows users to get access to detailed profiles of the expert, and claims to offer police verified curated experts who have undergone stringent background checks. Currently Orobind boasts of over 1000 customers in Bangalore alone with around 135 active personal trainers on the platform.

It should be noted that the startup recently completed 23 million funding round led by Amazon. The move helps Housejoy strengthen its fitness offering and offer a highly differentiated experience to its customers.

Housejoy is headed by CEO Saran Chatterjee, and overall the team has around 350 members , which doesn’t include service providers. Housejoy caters to people looking for a number of services such as plumbing, electrical, home cleaning, computer repair, fitness, drivers, pest control, beauty, laundry, carpentry and painting. Basically, all the services that one requires in their day-to-day life wrapped under one roof. Overall, it has 14 categories and is currently in 11 cities.

Fitness and wellness is a highly lucrative category for most of the home services players primarily because of high repeat rates and high customer lifetime value but to leverage it one must have a highly differentiated product experience and a tech enabled engagement platform.

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Fashion and Lifestyle

This women’s active wear brand wants women to feel confident when they work out

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s.lineworldfit

Rise in health consciousness among consumers and surge in sports & fitness enthusiasm among female consumers have propelled the growth of women’s activewear market. s.lineworldfit is a recently launched women’s activewear brand which offers fitness wear ranging from leggings, tops, and shorts among others. Founded by Nina Jacqueline Woods, this UK based brand is located in Cambridge and London. However, the products offered by s.lineworldfit can be purchased from anywhere in the world.

Advantages offered by activewear, such as breathability, static, thermal, and chemical resistance, and quick drying, has supplemented the growth of the global activewear market.

“We wanted women to feel sexy when they work out. When a woman feels amazing in their gym gear it acts a motivator to continue on with this active lifestyle,” said Nina to Times of Startups.

Talking more about the products, Nina said that s.lineworldfit offers premium high waisted leggings with the Highest Quality Fabric and performance. With a 4-way stretch construction and flat lock seams throughout, the leggings are made from 87% nylon/13% spandex. The fabric used in the products are silky smooth, no chafe and has superior coverage and the products are no see-through. The brand also offers breathable Solid Sports Bra which is Push Up and Compression Bandage Sports Bra Top which is Shockproof and come in many beautiful colors.

“Activewear is a utility clothing generally meant for athletes, engaged in various sports and fitness activities. It helps enhance the performance of athletes, because of its various advantages such as enhanced grip, wicking function, and bi-stretchable characteristics. Our products maintain its shape, have a full range of motion and are long lasting. Moreover, they are of high quality, need little care, and they are uniquely adaptable. They will quickly become anyone’s favorite go-to workout pants.” she added.

According to recent reports,  in 2018, the global women’s activewear market was valued at $125,078 million. The market is expected to reach $216.868 million by 2025.

Not just in the developed market, Women’s activewear has witnessed widespread adoption among consumers all across the globe. They are casual and comfortable apparel suitable for purposes other than gym or practice/fitness sessions too which adds to its demand value. Increase in the trend of activewear as regular or fashion wear has boosted manufacturers all around to expand their product offerings in various categories, including top, bottom, outerwear, innerwear & swimwear, and others.

Even though United Kingdom and North America dominated the global activewear market in 2018 and is expected to maintain its lead throughout the next year, the demand for activewear has seen a sharp surge in the emerging economies as well owing to the ongoing trends of pursuing a fit body and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. In 2018, United Kingdom and North America alone contributed about 53% share of the global market, owing to the increased interest in sports and fitness activities among the younger population in the region.

A significant rise in the disposable income along with growing fitness conscious population has added to the growth of the global activewear market. Moreover, growing interest in participation in physical activities is adding significantly to the demand for the sports-related products. Nevertheless, in many cases growing number of counterfeit products has led to safety & quality issues all over the world, leading to decline in brand credibility for various top brands.

Though existing players in the apparel market have rolled out their range of activewear products a long time back, brands like s.lineworldfit can expect enough market share left for them owing to the continued increase in demand for these products.

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Greensboro Business Women launch new beauty product line

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What started as a simple solution to a friend’s hair care problem turned into a successful brand. Greensboro, North Carolina natives Judith Jamison and Tamikia Samuels-McKiver invented Silky Curls – a patent pending product, designed to create long-lasting, spiral curls and deep waves without damage.

Jamison, a business expert who holds a Masters degree in Information Systems, moved to Charlotte, North Carolina to explore new business opportunities. Separated from her beautician, Samuels-McKiver, Jamison was unable to maintain the salon perfect curls she was accustom to wearing. To solve her problem she tried using traditional rollers, but her hair began to break. Seeking a solution to her dilemma, Jamison reached out to her best friend, Samuels-McKiver, for a remedy. Together these two innovative women invented Silky Curls.

mysilkycurlsSilky Curls’ unique patent consists of a flexible rod outlined in delicate silk fibers, specially designed to alleviate prints, creases and snagging commonly encountered through traditional hair roller usage. In addition, the custom made rods are easy to use and comfortable to sleep in. Eliminating the need for excessive heat, the Silky Curls brand has been praised by consumers across the world, and even has the celebrity hair world buzzing!
“It took a little over two years to get our line off the ground. We created several proto-types until we got it right. A lot of research was involved, but having the hands on ability to try our product on clients with all types of hair textures was a plus!” states Judith Jamison, a 35 year old inventor and entrepreneur.

“When my clients bragged about the results they received from Silky Curls, I knew we were on to something big. Their curls lasted twice as longer and looked like they were freshly done,” states Tamikia Samuels-McKiver, a 35 year old year inventor and owner of “Center of Attention” hair salon.

With a proven track record for reducing hair breakage and producing long-lasting, luxurious curls that promote healthy hair growth, the Silky Curls brand is on the rise. A simple remedy to a friend’s hair care issue has turned into a leading brand in the African American hair & beauty industry!

For more information about Silky Curls and to see a demonstration of the product, please visit here. To purchase Silky Curls also visit Amazon or EBay today!

 

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See how GoPlayr wish to provide one-stop Sporting and Fitness Solution for all

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GoPlayr

 

“The only bad workout is the one you didn’t do.”

According to a WHO(World Health Organization) report, approximately 2.5 million deaths per year are attributed to physical inactivity. Modern day sedentary lifestyle combined with increasing dependence on junk food have resulted in the prevalence of many lifestyle diseases.

It’s not that people are unaware of these facts and they don’t want to do anything about them. Everyone knows someone who started hitting the Gym and left it within a week or started attending yoga classes and found it too “boring” to continue with it. More often than not, people give up their fitness goals because they do not have enough motivation and a partner with whom they can enjoy their fitness activities.

Understanding these problems and with an aim to providing one-stop Sporting and Fitness Solution and ultimately bringing ‘active’ childhood days back, GoPlayr was founded by  Shwetang R.D.

GoPlayr provides sporting & fitness solution right from finding play pals, trainers, coaches of your favourite sports to discovering nearby activities & matches.  GoPlayr also gives you the option to host your own match and invite friends and acquaintances, rent venues and rate others sporting skills. If someone wants to rent a venue, GoPlayr provides a venue management software(SAAS or Software as a Service) to rent the venue and manage users, payments, schedules etc.

Born and brought up in a small town in Bihar, Shwetang graduated in Computer Science Engineering. Immediately after graduation, he moved to Brazil for work.

“Being in a 9 to 5 job for two years after college made me feel ‘I can do better than this’. I returned to India in January 2015 to start fresh, the long awaited StartUp dream. I started working on restaurant POS software which didn’t sell very well, started IT Services to support finances and eventually landed upon GoPlayr – Sporting services business. It took almost a year for me to come up with the idea of GoPlayr.” said Shwetang to Times of Startups.

“For a long time, I thought that I had to do something that had never been done before to be successful. While that is somewhat true, sometimes an innovation can be quite simple”, he added.

Shwetang said that going ahead with the idea of GoPlayr was not easy and he had to face many challenges. Right from setting up an office in a low budget to finding the right employees, getting people work and staying motivated in exchange for small returns to managing finances, he had to overcome many challenges.

According to Shwetang, Entrepreneurship is difficult and one must be ready to put in long working hours than people in other jobs do. Struggling for something you believe in genuinely is always exciting but it is hard to carry on and be motivated each day with not so many returns. Financial problems take up the most time.

Shwetang claims that GoPlayr’s web and android app have more features than any of its domain competitors but he considers just having more features is not a real differentiating factor.

“What I see as a differentiator is our team, our vision and the value we are giving back to our customer. We are leaving no stone unturned to convert this idea into reality. We have been pretty successful in our endeavour since we wrote the first line of code for GoPlayr. Within 3 months of starting operation, we have 60+ Venues & 15+ Trainers listed with us in Pune. Within 60 days of beta app launch, we have more than 500+ users and 150+ app reviews on app store. We‘re getting a tremendous response from corporates to participate in sporting activities.” said Shwetang.

The concept behind GoPlayr has been demonstrated at multiple summits and has received good feedback from investors and other fellow entrepreneurs along with plenty of suggestions for improvement.Within 2 months of its inception, GoPlayr was selected as Top 15 start-ups in Motorola Pitch Off – S3. GoPlayr was also selected as top 20 startups from 1200+ participants in Ideathon contest by Paytm & Mind batteries.

Explaining in detail how this app works, Shwetang said that GoPlayr is useful for anyone who wishes to stay fit by playing a sport or by doing any other outdoor activity that gives health benefits. A user can login to the app using facebook or google and see other users, matches nearby. The user can request others to join matches and send invites to others. One can also rent Venues and rate sports skills of other users. The app also gives an option to Corporates to include sports in their work culture. Also, Sports Clubs and Venues can list their venue with GoPlayr to get more leads and it can also help trainers/coaches get more visibility.

Tried the app and wish to submit a review ? Share your review of GoPlayr at

he***@ti*************.com











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