UAE platform forays into Saudi Arabia, to ramp up staff strength

UAE-based fitness platform Enhance Fitness is aiming to triple its current trainer base as it announces its launch in Saudi Arabia.

In an exclusive interview with Arab News, Enhance Fitness CEO and founder Tarek Mounir said that the platform has around 250 trainers and will be able to reach 700 in the next 24 months.

“The biggest focus of our strategy is just going to be in the Kingdom at least for the next 24 months. So we’re literally just focused entirely on the Saudi business,” Mounir added.

The platform allows users to book a session with their preferred trainer, which could be in their residence area or at their community gym.

Mounir explained that the company hires trainers from gyms, hotels, or community areas by providing them with the right tools and software to manage their training sessions further.

“That’s why we consider that hotels and gyms are actually our clients, and not our competitors, because we come, and we take that part of the responsibility away from them,” he added.

Moreover, users can access a wide range of workout and fitness activities such as bodybuilding, mixed martial arts, yoga, and its client gyms and hotels without additional costs.

Mounir launched the platform in 2018 after experiencing a knee injury and was unable to connect with trainers due to a lack of qualification transparency.

Through its academy, Enhance Fitness provides trainers with professional training and qualifications so they are able to reach their audience better.

“We have a team of tutors who train the trainers. And these guys have developed an entire curriculum that’s been uploaded on our digital platform,”

“We have our internal platform for training, so the trainers can always continue to improve their knowledge, whether in the hard skills or the soft skills,” Mounir explained. He also added that the company would hire many Saudi national trainers as a part of its expansion strategy.

“Because we’re aiming to hire a big number of Saudi nationals, a big part of our mission is not necessarily to find personal trainers but fitness enthusiasts who we can train, accredit, and utilize for the business as well,” Mounir stated.

Changing the shape of fitness, COVID-19 has had a positive effect when it comes to Mounir’s business as he stated that health awareness became 10 times bigger during the pandemic.

“We started training everybody virtually, whether it’s Zoom or Google meet, the trainer would open their laptop or their screen or their phone or their tablet and start virtual training,” he added.

Mounir also said that the business exploded after COVID-19, seeing an annual growth rate of almost three times.

The company raised $3 million in 2021 in its series A funding round. It is aiming to raise an additional $15 million in its next round as well as expand even further into Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the UK and Singapore.