After launching in the UK, Strove, a South African employee wellness startup plans to expand across Europe

After debuting in the United Kingdom, Strove, a South African employee wellness firm, is looking to expand further in Europe (UK).

Strove is an activity-based mobile rewards programme that helps organisations to urge their staff to live a healthy and active life, combating inactivity, burnout, and chronic stress. It was founded in 2020 by Chris Bruchhausen in conjunction with venture builder The Delta.

Over a dozen partner businesses, including Old Khaki, Poetry, Bootlegger Coffee, Mugg & Bean, Dis-Chem, Vida e Caffè, and Engen, have partnered with the platform to incentivize employees to be their best selves through activity monitoring and gamification.

Strove secured a ZAR4 million (US $277,000) seed fundraising round in July of last year, headed by Launch Africa Ventures, to aid it on its way to expanding to the UK, which it just achieved. It is currently aiming for a broader European expansion.

Employees may integrate activity monitoring devices and applications like Apple Health, Google Fit, Strava, and Fitbit with their Strove profile to improve their physical wellness. They may then sync any type of action, such as a run or a bike ride, and get points for each one.

“The points are determined by our points algorithm which looks at a number of different metrics such as heart rate, calories, distance, duration, and age of the employee, and assigns points accordingly. Those points can then be spent on vouchers at any of the merchant partners that we have in the app, some of which include Bootleggers, Vida, PicknPay, and Dis-Chem,” Bruchhausen told as per reports.

“We are also building a social element into the product. Currently, we have company leaderboards that rank the best performers in each organisation across all activity types – everything from number of meditation minutes completed, number of steps covered, distance… We also segment the leaderboards by departments so as to create a bit of competition between the different departments in a company.”

Strove, on the other hand, pays employees for synchronising meditation practises via their Apple Health or Google Fit connection.

“We also have a client web application which we make available to key stakeholders at each organisation that is a client of ours. The purpose of the web application is to enable these stakeholders to have aggregated insights into the usage of the product and the general wellbeing of their organisation over time. They can also use the web app to onboard and off-board employees, or assign them to teams or departments,” said Bruchhausen.

Strove, then, has a larger HR component, and it has a big aim to become a worldwide employee health and wellness application.

“Some of the larger overarching product roadmap features include virtual mental health support and tele-medicine to name a few,” Bruchhausen said.

International expansion is also an objective and has already started after the investment round. Strove has many financial services and technology organisations on board as clients in South Africa, according to Bruchhausen, and the startup has clients in the United Kingdom as of February.

“We will be rolling a product out in the European market in the next two months,” he said.

Strove charges a monthly membership fee per onboarded employee, which is paid to the firm, and has enjoyed steady revenue growth.