Being fired was how Emile Dumont ended up starting Bodynetic, a healthtech startup offering end-to-end solutions for chronic pain, posture issues, and improving users’ overall lifestyle.
An exercise and sports science practitioner, Emile had been working at a stretching studio. After his role was terminated, he began wondering, “Why are so many people selling posture correction? Yet, why are there no results from this?”
This thought led him to eventually start his own business, The Posture Lab. As a start, Emile invested some S$10K into the business, kicking off his services in a very small studio.
“The first year proved that there was something in the business as I was able to 14x the revenue on the first year all by myself,” he claimed to Vulcan Post.
However, the pandemic soon hit, and things took a tumble. Emile had to close the studio, unable to run any services.
“My strategy to keep ourselves afloat was really to begin innovating and thinking out of the box,” he explained.
With that, The Posture Lab began exploring ways to develop online content for their posture programmes while focusing on education.
During this period, the team also often received questions from clients asking if they were doing their exercises correctly. The team was constantly exchanging videos to help them with these corrections.
“It was then that we realised there was a need for a solution,” Emile said.
As they dug deeper, the founder realised how they could also deploy such solutions in a corporate and B2B2C perspective, which drove them to create an app.
“While it was tough as we had to burn more money in that period, we are beginning to see the rewards of it,” Emile said.
With that, the current model of Bodynetic was created.
Using technology to deliver healthy habits
Built with the purpose of impacting people to prevent posture, chronic pain issues, and health issues where it can be controlled, Bodynetic comprises three pillars. They are:
- Physical: This involves certifications and group classes mainly where the team works with locations to monetise spaces.
- Digital: This involves pre-recorded audios and videos for the purpose of integration into spaces like hotels, lounges, studios, gyms, and more.
- App: Now in its beta stage, Bodynetic’s AI app uses computer vision and movement tracking to allow users to do exercise in any location and anytime.
The startup also offers massage therapy, posture analysis, physiotherapy, and personal training solutions.
It took about an entire year for the team to fully transition into its current hybrid model, as it wasn’t easy creating a new system, finding clients for it, and acquiring those first buy-ins from said clients.
Instead of focusing on individual consumers, Bodynetic is eyeing a bigger fish—businesses.
Working together with hotels, resorts, and corporates, Bodynetic’s digital solutions can be integrated into spaces such as the gym, lounge, library, and/or guest rooms. This allows guests and the public to utilise the audio or visual on the TV, or in spaces created for immersive experiences.
Its current hotel partners include Pan Pacific Orchard, Singapore, and Meliá Kuala Lumpur.
“Our app, once launched, will be mounted on kiosks to allow for guests or individuals to experience and do exercise through these kiosks,” Emile elaborated.
“[It will work] without the need for a trainer to oversee the training, allowing them to be autonomous in exercise choices while being corrected via the feedback from the app itself. [It will also use] AI movement detection through computer vision and machine learning.”
Making an impact
Beyond reshaping public health, Bodynetic has another lofty ambition—to impact 1,000,000 individuals directly through their inclusive solutions.
“We have spent the last three years training visually impaired athletes in Singapore and we have a goal to use our app to expand our reach,” Emile said.
En route to this goal, they’ve also tested the app with people with autism, and have gradually increased the app’s accessibility to the elderly and other individuals with disabilities.
“We also do certifications in fitness and wellness and in the midst of looking for organisations to work with youth at risk organisations that we can train and certify them,” he said.
In line with their goal to become a notable social enterprise, Bodynetic is currently a member of raiSE (Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise) in Singapore, where they are held accountable and required to submit measurable outcomes for their work.
Nimble and agile
Once they launch their app, Emile and his team will be focusing on delving deeper into the hospitality and the tourism sector, partnering with corporates to bring wellness for staff benefits and increase the footprint of more digital wellness solutions across the industries.
From there, the startup has goals to expand into Vietnam and the Philippines, followed by Indonesia.
In the long term, they even envision expanding into the whole APAC region, and possibly Mexico as gateway into the US.
“Our roadmap is to first be commercially viable in our commercial side of the business to be able to sustain the growing pressures of all businesses,” Emile said.
“Thereafter, when the gears of that are moving smoothly, we begin working with organisations or NGOs or partnering with other social enterprises and social service organisations to bring our services to them.”
Featured Image Credit: Bodynetic
