Fitlap, a member of Tehnopol’s health tech community, hopes to break into the US market

Fitlap, popular in Estonia, is an adjustable virtual nutrition plan that helps you lose weight and instructs you on healthy eating. Besides the nutrition plan, the platform also offers the possibility to create shopping lists and establish goals. As of this spring, Fitlap is also a member of the Tehnopol led Estonian Connected Health Cluster.

Fitlap currently has more than 230,000 users across Estonia, including those people who have tried the platform for just a couple of days. There are approximately 300,000 users globally. Fitlap is accessible in English, Finnish and Russian. “Fitlap found immediate success in Estonia, but we haven’t had this type of success in foreign markets yet,” said René Laane, founder of Fitlap.

The US market is the current primary focus. Laane says that they are revising their nutrition plan for the US market – users will be provided with a few recipes by the app, but they hope that users will begin to create content themselves. “Clients can create their own recipes, but before we release them to other clients, we evaluate them to see whether they are healthy and meet our standards; essentially make sure the recipes are comprised of the right nutrients and are balanced,” said Laane.

The platform was created out of personal need

René Laane said that in the beginning they weren’t planning to offer a nutritional consultancy service. But as due to a personal need, he realised that the Estonian market and the international market were missing something just like this. “I was getting ready for a competition and I wanted to gain weight so that I could set the Estonian record in heavyweight bench press.” said Laane. “I looked at various nutrition plans, but I couldn’t find one that could be used in a sustainable and long-term manner, as most of them had just around ten different recipes.”

At the time, he was also attending an online marketing course, and then he made a proposal to a close coach/nutritionist to create a new platform offering nutritional consultancy. That collaboration created the kaalustalla.ee website, which can be considered the precursor to Fitlap. They uploaded between 50 and 60 recipes in the beginning, which was already a lot more than their competitors.

Fitlap was created in 2015. The appeal of the platform is that it offers the user much more than just recipes. For example, the user can substitute food products in recipes. There are many substitutions available and the system itself calculates their appropriate amounts. The user has the option to create their own recipes that are both familiar and healthy.

Additionally, the user is given a choice of recipes that are specifically suited to them. For this, the platform takes into consideration the person’s weight, goals, gender and other data. The platform also takes into consideration whether the person is lactose or glucose intolerant or is diabetic.

Scanning bar codes and a level system

Fitlap users have an established Facebook support group that currently has more than 30,000 members. The support group’s members often make suggestions regarding new features, which helps in developing the platform to fit the needs of clients. The group has another use – it can be used as a test group to test new features. “We have had many features that the test group have trialled, and that they haven’t made it onto the app, but many ideas have also been realised,” said Laane.

“Basically, the group also serves as customer support, as long-term users answer questions from new users and we don’t always have to get involved.” They have carried out surveys in the support group that receive thousands of responses in just a couple of hours.

Over the years, the platform users have also written thousands of blog posts in which they discuss their successes and failures. Laane says that it adds a human factor to it as their posts have been extremely popular.

One of their newest developments is that Fitlap’s app now allows users to scan bar codes. Users can now scan their food products themselves and add them to their own menu.

When talking about what they are working on, Laane highlighted a new level system that will be live in the near future. Each user will have a certain level, and by performing certain actions, they can gather points and advance to the next level. Each new level has bonuses.

Fitlap joined the Estonian Connected Health Cluster, because they wanted to be informed with what’s going on in the field of health. “We are dealing with people’s health, so I believed it was necessary to be part of this information field,” said Laane. Additionally, they hope to meet other members of the Estonian Connected Health Cluster and find potential cooperation opportunities.

The Connected Health Cluster led by Tehnopol Science and Business Park is Estonia’s biggest healthcare tech community, uniting health service providers, health tech companies and all other key interest groups in the field. The cluster’s support enables domestic cooperation projects and the export of health technological solutions to other countries. The activities of the cluster are co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.