Virgin Pulse Acquired Competitors ShapeUp and Global Corporate Challenge

By Staff Writer

Feb 25, 2016 09:08 PM EST

Virgin Pulse acquired two of its competitors, Shape Up and Global Corporate Challenge to conquer the wellness market. It was not disclosed as how much was the two companies bought. The acquisition was made possible because of the investment made by Insight Venture Partners, Virgin Group, Cue Ball and Excel Venture Management. The company specializes in designing technology that will help promote better lifestyles for the employees.

Virgin Pulse which is a part of Virgin Group, particularize in designing technology to upgrade the habits of good lifestyles for the employees. Its products are billed as being customized to individuals. It helps them to manage their nutrition, cognition, stress, financial health, sleep, philanthropy, personal relationships and a lot more, as reported by Venture Beat.

Chris Boyce, Virgin Pulse CEO informed VentureBeat that the company aims to "transform the corporate wellness market by showing companies that investing in employee health and well-being is moving the needle in meaningful and measurable ways across the entire business." He continued, saying, "Wellness programs have typically been seen as wellness done to employees, not for them. The intent has been focused on reducing healthcare costs, disease management, and on curing the already sick. We believe the focus should be on helping organizations build well-being into the DNA of their corporate cultures and engage all employees."

Virgin Pulse's acquisition of ShapeUp in Providence and Global Corporate Challenge in Australia will almost double Virgin's number of employees to 500 and its yearly earnings will reach to $100 million. Virgin Pulse CEO said in an interview that it is large part of their strategy and will continue to dominate the industry.

According to Boston Business Journal, the health company was founded as Virgin HealthMiles in 2004 and got rebranded in 2013.  Since then, the company grew at a fast pace adding 100 employees in 2014 for its expansion in the wellness business.  The business concentrated on giving software to clients to assist client employees to be happier and healthier by giving employees rewards because of the good habits.  Companies that utilize the software notice 45% better rate of retaining their employees, higher safety scores, more productive employees and lower health care costs.

ShapeUp CEO Rajiv Kumar MD will be the Chief Medical Officer for the Virgin Pulse Institute and engineer the analytics team. Global Corporate Challenge CEO Tom Sermon will be president of Virgin Pulse International and project Virgin Pulse's global expansion, as reported by mobihealthnews.

Merging with the two companies will expand Virgin Pulse's thrust to 185 countries.  The company will now run the wellness program with more than 5 million participants who started from 6,500 customers.  In addition to the officers, the Global Corporate Challenge founder and president Glenn Riseley will be the director of the new market development.  Virgin Pulse was funded $92 million by Insight Venture Partners, Richard Branson's Virgin Group, Cue Ball and Excel Venture Management.

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