Student researchers at Ottawa’s Algonquin College have helped advance the next generation of fitness through a Virtual Personal Training app developed in partnership with an Ottawa start-up company, Gymtrack.
Gymtrack’s two young founders approached the Health and Wellness Research Centre at Algonquin College for assistance with the research and development of a novel concept using a combination of hardware and software to track workouts in fitness facilities. The system keeps track of clients’ workouts using a bracelet worn by each member and a “smart pin” attached to each piece of exercise equipment.
A research project was established which included two Algonquin students hired to work with the Gymtrack team at a local start-up garage in the summer of 2014. The student designer and programmer helped develop the mobile app for the Gymtrack system, as well as honing the company’s corporate image. During this time, Gymtrack was invited into the prestigious 500 Start-ups Accelerator in San Francisco, which included a $100,000 equity contribution. The team took part in a 500 Start-ups demo day in late October and their product received glowing reviews by both Tech Crunch and The Next Web.
Pablo Srugo, Founder & Co-CEO of Gymtrack Inc. says “Assistance from the Health and Wellness Research at Algonquin College helped us leverage the limited resources we had and connected us with top students who were able to help us design and develop our software applications. Not only did we ultimately end up hiring the students on a fulltime basis, but their work ultimately helped us land follow-on investments and grow our company to 15 full time staff in six months.”
Algonquin’s Research Centre is now assisting with the next stage of the product development in collaboration with the students’ association, which operates a large scale fitness facility on campus. This follow-up project will test and assess the first large scale implementation of the Gymtrack system with a cross section of gym users from students trying to stay fit to advanced varsity athletes.
