• Zing Coach – an AI-driven fitness app operator with Belarusian roots – attracted USD 10M of Series A investment from Zubr Capital and TriplePoint Capital
• The app relies on sophisticated AI vitals and body measurements to prepare highly personalized training plans
• The new investment will allow the app to add more types of training and the company – to expand geographically

This June, Zing Coach – the personalized AI-powered fitness app developer – announced the successful closing of its Series A round of USD 10M. The investment comes from the well-known VC firm Zubr Capital (invested in 3DLOOK, among others) and TriplePoint Capital.

The Founders and the Premise

Zing Coach has a founding team of three:

• Walter Gjergia, the co-founder and Chief Wellness Officer, is also known as Shi Xing Mi, the first non-Chinese 32nd-generation Shaolin Monk. He became the CEO of a tech startup in his mid-20s, which went IPO in two years. He then immersed himself in years of vigorous training at China’s Shaolin Temple. According to the company legend, the unique knowledge and skills that he carried from there are now embedded in the company and its product that improves human lives, health, and performance.
• Tanya Parfenyuk, co-founder and CEO, has a significant background in product development and 10+ years of experience in launching and growing health and fitness products. Under her leadership, the app achieved the highest retention rate among competitors, according to SensorTower, and over a million downloads worldwide.
• Alexey Kurov, co-founder and CTO, joined the team in 2023 after Zing acquired the AI-driven yoga app Zenia, which he co-founded. He brings his unique expertise in AI, computer vision, and LLM technology, helping Zing Coach to bridge the gap between apps and personal trainers.

‘Zing Coach company has an outstanding team whose expertise and dedication are evident in their innovative approach,’ Zubr Capital’s investment director and partner Viktar Dzenisevich states.

‘When the first iPhone was released 17 years ago, it marked the beginning of the mobile app era, and innovation in the space has continued to exceed expectations with each passing year. Today, with recent advancements in AI technology, apps have become pocket-sized assistants, offering personalized advice and feedback with human-like communication.’ the investor continues.

Speaking of fitness apps in particular, they do seem like a great way to simplify healthy life for all people. Reportedly, 54% of the global population fail to meet the World Health Organisation’s recommended levels of physical activity. Another research shows that people who want to use apps to improve their health by organizing their physical activity quit after just one day in 63% of instances and 91% within 28 days.

According to the startup’s numbers, users are 29% more likely to continue using Zing Coach after day one when compared to competitor apps, and 25% are more likely to continue for a month or longer.

AI-Optimized Personalization

Zing Coach facilitates sustainable healthy lifestyle changes by offering highly personalized AI-powered workouts that continuously finetune based on such factors as past performance, real-time vitals, activity levels, and health and lifestyle data.

In contrast to most fitness apps, Zing Coach doesn’t use quizzes to begin intersecting with the user. Instead, it employs ZingLab – a set of advanced fitness tests and movement analyzers powered by computer vision – and body composition scanners comparable to professional DEXA scanners to evaluate the new user’s current and ongoing state of health accurately. In actuality, the user gets assisted at every stage of their fitness progress by their own AI Coach. It uses a large language model (LLM) and a personalized tone of voice to match the user’s emotional profile and promptly build a connection with the user. It monitors their progress, offers tailored advice and insights, as well as words of encouragement and motivation.

‘Fitness quizzes are subjective. The results of a fitness quiz depend on both a person’s self-perception and their emotional state at a given moment. Moreover, a person without fitness training cannot properly estimate their actual fitness levels and ‘opportunity zones.’ For example, this can cause a person to focus exclusively on cardio when they should have been doing strength workouts, or vice versa.Most importantly, a fitness quiz will never let you properly track progress, nor will a scale or a tape measure — but our body scanning feature has got it covered,’ Ms Parfenyuk comments.

The company’s proprietary ZingLab combines a set of CV-powered tests, performance tracking and body composition scanner, stretching and strength tests, allowing to remove the guesswork and make both initial assessment and progress tracking objectively effective.

‘On top of that, Zing uses the data from ZingLab for its unique AI Recommender System to generate and adapt personalized fitness plans. Together with CV tech – part of Zenia’s IP, acquired by Zing Coach – that creates truly interactive experiences, the app becomes the digital AI copy of a personal trainer,’ Ms Parfenyuk further explains.

Growing on Every Level

Reportedly, the startup enjoyed exponential growth in the past year, but the CEO is convinced that the vast digital fitness coaching market remains largely untapped. There is still work to be done to make leading a healthy lifestyle and achieving ambitious fitness goals attainable for all by providing highly personalized workout planning and guidance. Regularly, this can cost hundreds of dollars to hire a personal trainer – the money that Zing saves. Naturally, employing applied practice and coaching also sets Zing Coach apart from most fitness platforms in the eyes of the user.

Сurrently, Zing Coach offers strength and HIIT workouts, as well as newly added stretching and recovery workouts — both for training at home and at a gym. Ms Parfenyuk shares that the company plans to add an extra 170 machines to extend the gym training library this Autumn. This will follow the full launch of Zing’s AI Coach.

To make it possible, Zing Coach is expanding its product development team, which is facilitated by the current investment of USD 10M. Additionally, the newly hired talent will help Zing Coach to expand its AI Coaching technology to such forms of exercise as pilates, yoga, and more.

Marketing team will also be expanded to enable Zing Coach to reach new international markets.

‘Digital fitness is a huge area of interest for consumers and we’re excited to support Zing Coach, a true leader in this space. We believe this investment will enable the company to grow tenfold in the years ahead and pull ahead of its competitors in the growing fitness app market. Our commitment to supporting Zing Coach is rooted in our belief that they have the right combination of team, technology, and growth trajectory to outpace their competitors significantly,’ Mr Dzenisevich concludes.