This Miami couple wants to bring a wellness coach to your office
Wellness—the art and science of living better—is big these days. And one husband and wife-led Miami company are looking to capitalize.
Previously known as meditation.live, the company, now called Wellness Coach, is offering businesses an all-in-one wellness platform for improving employee well-being. The platform includes mindfulness, fitness, nutrition, professional development, leadership and entrepreneurship classes.
Unlike many other digital wellness platforms, all facets of Wellness Coach are interactive—meaning employees can get live responses from their coaches.
“You can come to sessions in our virtual rooms and get actual feedback,” said Wellness Coach co-founder and chief content officer Julie Sharma.
Wellness Coach is part of a booming human resources technology space. The segment that has seen $1.7 billion in venture investment in the first quarter of 2019; according to Tech Crunch, that is more than any quarter in 2018 and $677 million more than the combined investments in the space in 2017.
And if the company takes off, it will join a growing number of Miami startup successes.
Digital platform
Wellness Coach works a bit like Peloton, the popular fitness platform. In this case, a live coach instructs a room-full of employees on how to be their best.
Unlike Peloton, Wellness Coach sells directly to businesses, who then offer the service free to their employees.
Sharma says studies have shown that businesses that invest in their employees’ mental health see returns of up to $6 for every dollar spent. The company decided to price its new, expanded enterprise service at $3 a month per active user. That compares with as much as $12.99 a month for some competitors.
Types of classes include emotional intelligence, active listening, communicating effectively, and meditation and yoga techniques. The Sharmas have recruited a roster of experienced coaches and instructors in the space, including a Harvard-trained cardiologist, a former chief mindfulness officer at Aetna, and mindfulness teacher Sarah McLean, whose work has been endorsed by Deepak Chopra.
Family business
The story of Wellness Coach is really the story of Julie and her husband, Wellness Coach co-founder and CEO Dipanshu “D” Sharma. The couple moved from New York to Miami about two years ago.
“We came to Miami because we wanted to be in a community that already had a nice sense of wellness, where people did yoga and meditation,” Julie said. “Miami is a very fitness-forward city—the beach is really just an outside gym. And Miami is beyond beautiful.”
And, of course, there were financial considerations.
“It’s also a great business environment—there is a huge tax advantage,” she said. “Rather than pay 10- to 15% of our income [in taxes], we can reinvest that directly into the company and build a bigger team in Miami.”
Julie is an accountant by training; D is a serial entrepreneur who holds a Master’s Degree in computer science. His past business experience includes working with artificial intelligence.
At his previous companies, D, said, his focus was on raising as much money as possible. But this can dilute the value of an owner’s stake.
With Wellness Coach, he and Julie are taking some outside investment, including $3 million from SoftBank. But they are mostly “bootstrapping,” or using their own funds to get the business to profitability. All the while, they maintain control of the bulk of the company.
By one measure, on a gross basis, the company is already profitable. It declined to state current revenues but said it has more than 100 commercial clients globally. The company employs about five people in Miami and about 35 globally.
It shows a passion project can be commercially successful.
“We’ve enjoyed being hands on and learning new skills in a space neither one of us had experience in,” D said. “It’s been humbling but rewarding.”
