SaaS platform Bookee raises pre-seed funding from Antler India, others

Bookee, the SaaS platform for fitness entrepreneurs, has raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-seed round led by Antler India, with participation from Pallav Nadhani (Founder, Charts.com and FusionCharts) and Abhishek Rungta (Founder & CEO, Indus Net Technologies).

Bookee combines a customer acquisition engine, a full-suite operation software, loyalty and retention products, and live-streaming plus on-demand capabilities to deliver a comprehensive fitness SaaS solution for the global market with an initial focus on the US.

In the post Coronavirus (Covid-19) era, fitness and yoga studios, gym chains as well as solo fitness instructors have had to rely on multiple tools to ensure business continuity by switching between CRM software, scheduling solutions, payment management systems and streaming services. This has not only increased administration time, cost and complexity, but also resulted in broken customer experience and lower revenues, said the startup in a release.

Founded in 2020 by Vistar Singh and Rajat Hans, Bookee is a complete business solution developed with the needs of fitness entrepreneurs at its core. It provides management features (including scheduling, POS, payroll, payments, analytics, retention and streaming), in addition to helping businesses grow their client base, delivering a superior user experience at all touchpoints. As a result, Bookee has driven an average 14% increase in revenue and 21% increase in total bookings across their current clientele so far.

“Fitness entrepreneurs play a huge role in making our world a healthier and happier place, but running a successful business is not easy. As the pandemic forced fitness businesses to deliver classes online, Bookee made it easier for them to adopt live-streaming and on-demand services. Now with offline studios and gyms gradually reopening, Bookee is helping them meet the new expectations of their customers by delivering classes offline, live, and on-demand, and providing a seamless experience across all these channels," said Singh.

“2020 shook up the global fitness industry like never before. On one hand, the demand side has grown strongly with a universal focus on health and fitness. On the other hand, the supply side has to rapidly adapt to this new world with better discovery, demand generation, cost and capacity planning, and hybrid offerings. Whether it’s a yoga studio, gym chain or a single fitness influencer, there is a burning need for a better SaaS platform. Bookee has developed a world-class solution tailored for fitness business owners that can help them future-proof their businesses, scale massively and help acquire a global clientele while operating anywhere in the world,” added Nitin Sharma, partner at Antler India.

Earlier this year, global early-stage VC firm Antler announced a full-fledged launch in India. Antler is one of the fastest growing VC platforms in the world and plans to deploy $100 million in 100+ Indian startups over the next three years.