Mitgo invests in a mobile meditation app
The company’s latest investment promises lower stress, better sleep and improved mental health
Mitgo is spreading its investment wings, announcing a financial support package for the mindfulness, meditation and sleep quality mobile app, known as Practico. US roll-out is expected by the end of Q2, 2023.
Meditation and mindfulness is a market that’s booming. According to consumer data platform Statista, the number of mental health-focussed apps grew by 22% in 2022, with 135M downloads for meditation and sleep apps alone. The sector will see substantial further growth in the coming years, with revenues forecasted to reach $17.5b USD by 2030.
Why is this market seeing such growth? Well, life can be stressful. Add inflation and a looming financial crisis to that, a global pandemic and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, and there are many reasons people might feel their mental health slip – and look for solutions.
The founders of Practico, US-based Anton Shayakhov and Poland-based Dima Afonin and Daniel Kosinsky, began work on their idea back in 2019. Released in several languages including English, German, Polish, and Russian, 100+ guided meditations were created, resulting in more than 300K downloads and 20K subscriptions. With the proof of concept done and feeling that the time was right, the trio decided to enter the US market.
Reaching new users through gamification
Making their first inroads at the end of 2021, Practico’s founders soon learned how competitive and oversaturated the US market can be. To stand out, their product needed to find its niche.
In 2022, the idea to gamify the application arrived. The founders wanted to “make a real game” out of mindfulness – incentivising participation and rewarding progress. To achieve this, a total app rebuild was necessary; the founders “aim to fuse the best of mental-health apps and mobile gaming to get an upper hand in user acquisition and retention.”
Enter Mitgo – the perfect investment partner for this sort of product development and business scaling. Seeing the potential of a cooperation together, Practico’s founders decided to accept Mitgo’s offer of investment, bringing Mitgo’s expert team on-side.
A guided path to becoming a better self
The app aims to set a clear path to “becoming a better self”, offering access to various self-care tools and techniques. Users are guided along this path by friendly virtual characters who introduce them to exciting digital worlds. Their journeys together lead them through many aspects of mindfulness – and every step promises rewards and achievements.
As they progress, users see how their avatars grow and develop with each reward collected. Users feel the real-world rewards too, as the app’s meditations and mindfulness exercises take effect.
The app uses the Tamagochi-approach, appealing to a user’s instinct to take care of the wellbeing of someone else – in this case, their digital avatar. The benefits they experience themselves can almost be seen as a side-effect to playing the game.
A beta version of the app will be rolled out as soon as by the end of Q2, 2023. Subscriptions for the final version are expected to start at around $69 USD per year, with additional services and add-ons costing up to an extra $30 USD per year.
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