Zenia Yoga

Zenia Yoga is a yoga service. He uses neural networks and computer vision technologies to compare the exercises of a student and an instructor through a smartphone camera. In case of discrepancies, the application signals this to the user.

Zenia Yoga is available for Android and iOS platforms. It recognizes 16 key joints and the curvature of a person's back through the front camera of a smartphone and instantly evaluates the correctness of the technique. To participate in live lessons, the application provides an anonymous mode, where only body lines are visible to the instructor. The subscription price starts at 799 rubles per month (by the end of February 2021).

The project was launched in December 2019. The founders are Alexey Kurov, Denis Sokolov and Dmitry Zausaev. To launch a startup, the team moved to Belarus.

History

2023: Zing Coach buys out Zenia Yoga

On November 25, 2023, it became known that the German company Zing Coach entered into an agreement on the acquisition of the Russian yoga service Zenia. The amount of the transaction as of the specified date is not reported.

Startup Zenia in 2019 was founded by Samara entrepreneurs Alexei Kurov, Denis Sokolov, Dmitry Zausaev and Stas Demidov. Zenia's real-time yoga mobile app tracks movement correctness and provides feedback. The service is based on a virtual assistant based on artificial intelligence. Kurov announced the sale of the project through the social network Facebook (owned by Meta, which is recognized as an extremist organization; activities on the territory of the Russian Federation are prohibited).

Zing Coach

As a result of the deal, I am moving to a new position as co-founder and CTO at Zing. Our fusion is a symbiosis of a great product and technology with an eye to creating an AI instructor for fitness classes. We are talking about the maximum personalization of the process, and about communication at the level of a real coach, - says Kurov.

Zing Coach, headquartered in Munich, was established in 2021. The main product startup is a personal trainer based on AI, developed using scientifically based algorithms. Experts in the field of health care fitness and psychology were involved in the creation of this virtual assistant. Zing Coach is said to be taking exercise personalisation to the next level with workouts tailored to the user's individual needs. As of the end of November 2023, Zing Coach is recruiting additional employees to further work on the project and expand the functionality of the service.^[1]

2021: Raising $300,000 in investments

At the end of February 2021, it became known that supermodel and investor Natalya Vodianova, together with business partner Timon Athenian, invested $300 thousand in Zenia Yoga. For what purposes the company intends to spend the funds raised, it does not say.

Zenia Yoga is the world's first virtual yoga-based assistant. AI Thanks to him, yoga is becoming more democratic: now everyone can access the whole variety of instructors from all over the world, - said Vodianova, commenting on investing in. startup

Zenia Yoga, an AI service founded by Russians for yoga, received $300 thousand from supermodel Natalia Vodyanova

Over the past 3 months, by the end of February 2021, the number of new users of Zenia Yoga has grown by 30%. Under the influence of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, about 70% of yoga instructors switched to online classes and 90% plan to continue working in this format after the restrictions are lifted, said project co-founder Alexei Kurov.

Earlier, the investment company Bulba Ventures, Mikhail Lyalin, the general director of the game development company Zeptolab and the founders themselves, invested in the startup. The amounts of investments were not named.^[2]

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