Presenter:
Ali Jawad, Co-Founder and Director of Accessercise.
Startup:
Accessercise is the first complete fitness app created specifically for people with disability.
Transcript
[00:23 – 03:26] Ali Jawad
This is me. Yes, I was a very cute kid and I was born as a double leg amputee, growing up I was an obsessed gym user, which allowed me to achieve international success and compete at four Paralympic Games winning silver in 2016. However, I always wondered why as a disabled person, there is no fitness tool for me to exercise on my own terms. I had to rely on people to guide me Fast forward 17 years and this is evident, with over 70,000 health and fitness apps globally available. None service the disabled market with 81% of disabled people in the UK alone wanting to be more active. But continue to have limited resources.
This is why at Accessercise we built a purpose made fitness app allowing disabled people to exercise on their own terms without relying on other people. Our solution is an integrated fitness app, which has three key features a unique exercise library with bespoke exercises tailored to the user’s impairment, a social hub where users get to like love, share and comment and support each other, and an explore section that allows users to rate the accessibility of sporting facilities in the local area. This would have been an incredible tool for me growing up as a disabled person.
Our business model is a standard freemium premium with two major revenue streams and a third coming in future versions with e-commerce. Our go to market strategy covers three main avenues. Firstly, directly to consumers. Secondly, through partnerships with organizations within the fitness and disability industry. And finally working with governments as part of their disability support packages at government wide level.
The team behind the vision are all high performing people in the areas of sport, disability, law and business. You have myself, a four time Paralympian with a 17 year sporting career. Sam, a world champion sailor who is heavily involved in projects for the London 2012 Olympics. Yulia, a top lawyer, and Shareen, a former managing director of Barclays Bank in just over a year since launch.
We’ve already had incredible traction within the industry, with thousands of downloads, an MVP that’s live in the UK market. We’ve been featured live on CNN Global, gained User Economics, which have been proven to be scalable to the masses and even won the Inclusion Startup of the Year award. We’re currently in a funding round seeking £1 million to give us 18 months. Runway to allow us to add more impairments in the app and have 140,000 active users for expansion to America.
So if you have a disability, please download the app and give us as much feedback as possible. And if you’re an investor, please check out our equity crowdfunding page. So what are you waiting for? Come on the journey with us and help us change access to exercise forever.