- Quell is a gaming company that promotes physical fitness
- The brand raised $3 million from investors including Twitch
- Quell is available on PCs, Macs, and Mobile Devices
Businesses around the world were hit hard by the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic. What added to the miseries of startups was a nationwide lockdown, imposed restrictions, and following a social distancing protocol. But, despite these roadblocks, the fitness sector has made the most out of it by taking its business to an online platform. It not only allows businesses to retain existing customers but also expand to new regions and users. Quell, a London-based startup, is trying to bring an at-home fitness program in the form of a video-game. The Startup has successfully raised $3 million through seed funding to develop its online services.
About Quell
Quell is an immersive fitness game founded by Cameron Brookhouse and Dough Stidolph. The app helps players get fit while fighting their way through a fantasy world. The game is kind of a low-cost take on Pelton, an exercise equipment and media company. It could also be compared to the ‘Ring Fit adventure.’ The startup offers a first-person boxing-style game where a player uses a wearable resistance system. It is an adjustable system of resistance bands and can simulate impacts and track the wearer’s movements. The wearable’s inbuilt gyroscope and accelerometer sensors measure the player’s activity like punch speed, accuracy and keep the resistance varying to challenge the user.
Quell’s Funding
Last year, the startup featured as Y Combinator’s top startups on the S20 Demo Day. This round’s investors include Kevin Lin and Emmet Shear (Twitch co-founders), Naval Ravikant (AngelList founder), Josh Hannah, TenCent, Khosla Ventures, Heartcore, Social Impact Capital, etc. The startup’s Kickstarter campaign brought in around $670,000 from some 3,000 backers.
Quell offers its game for PCs, Macs, and mobile devices, but no console support, unfortunately. One reason may be the added cost and complexity of the console hardware approval process. The CEO, Brookhouse’s main goal was to build a game that gets the player exercising while still being deeply immersive. The gameplay encourages movement intuitively instead of throwing prompts at the player. The company aims to ship its first lot of hardware by the end of 2021. The current funds raised will help them work on transitioning their prototypes into production.
In the near future, the gaming system will likely evolve to improve its user experience. The company is also looking to involve third-party developers and allow them to create their own content for the system.
