An Uzbekistan-born entrepreneur has launched an AI startup for the fitness industry and secured over $600,000 in investments.

Founded after gaining experience in the US wellness industry and launching 1Fit in Uzbekistan, the startup already works with over 180 fitness gyms and studios, has raised over $600,000 in investments, and is developing its own AI products. Read our full interview below.

Farkhod Firkatov, City — Tashkent, CEO of Deepen

How It All Started

I have been working in the wellness industry since 2016—over 10 years now. I had my own wellness startup in Austin, Texas, where I worked with major technology companies, providing corporate wellness programs, and organized numerous health & wellness challenges across the state.

Then I returned to Uzbekistan and joined 1Fit, where I helped launch the project in the local market. The launch was successful.

Having gone through both of these experiences—from corporate wellness in the US to a large-scale B2C launch in Uzbekistan—I saw the same problem from different angles: the fitness industry is fragmented. Businesses operate without digital infrastructure, consumer apps cannot see what happens inside the gym, and wearable devices measure physiological metrics but do not understand the training context.

I wanted to create a product that connects all these elements and can positively impact the health of millions of people. Thus, the idea for Deepen was born.

Startup Launch

The beginning was not easy. The first nine months were spent developing the core technology product—and simultaneously communicating with clients to understand their pain points. The fitness industry turned out to be under-digitized, so convincing gym owners and administrative staff to switch to a new digital product was quite challenging.

We started with a few initial clients, and this first experience helped us promote the product among other fitness businesses—word of mouth within the industry began to work.

We also had to build the team from scratch. It all started with a conversation among three people in a coffee shop: me, Sadokat Kazieva—as a product designer, and Norbek Yusupjonov—as CTO. The three of us laid the foundation for what has now become Deepen.

Target Audience

Deepen works with three groups of users:

1. Fitness businesses—over 180 gyms and studios use Deepen ERP.
2. End consumers—over 70,000 participants in the DeepenWell community, which grew organically without paid marketing.
3. Corporate clients—four companies, with 5,000 employees on corporate wellness programs.

The total B2B client base exceeds 160,000 users. Deepen AI Coach has already sold over 500 units.

Incubation Programs

Even while living in Austin, I participated in several accelerator programs and collaborated with many startups, working on various product solutions. With Deepen, we recently completed Draper University in San Francisco, including their Hero Training program. It teaches bold and large-scale thinking, aiming for truly big ideas and creating solutions capable of making a real impact.

To date, we have raised over $600,000 from business angels, venture funds, and foreign investors.

Challenges

The biggest difficulty at the start was that people were not immediately ready to trust digital solutions. This was a completely new product for the Uzbek market, and the fitness industry proved to be one of the most under-digitized business categories, despite Uzbekistan being among the countries with some of the highest rates of digitalization in the world.

There was also a more specific case: in some gyms, administrative staff initially resisted implementing the new process. People were accustomed to established "manual" work methods, and transitioning to a digital system required changing habits. The breakthrough came when we began working directly with business owners—showing them a transparent view of what was happening in their business and the revenue growth potential through digitalization. Once owners saw this transparency and growth opportunities, conversion rates increased sharply.

My personal advice for early-stage startups is to find product-market fit as quickly as possible. Try to acquire your first customers and find those who are already willing to pay for the product, and then build further development around that.

Achievements

Key results include:

— Over 180 B2B partner gyms
— Over 160,000 B2B clients
— DeepenWell community has over 70,000 participants and grew without paid marketing
— Over 500 Deepen AI Coach units sold
— Four corporate clients, with over 5,000 employees
— Over $600,000 in raised investments from angels, VCs, and foreign investors
— Participation in Draper University, including the Hero Training program.

Plans

Our big goal is to build a comprehensive wellness ecosystem where a person can see the full picture of their health in one place: how much they train, what they eat, and, with the help of DeepView AI, understand recovery metrics, resting heart rate, and other key body parameters. Ultimately, we want to help people make more informed decisions about their health, lead an active lifestyle, and truly understand their bodies.

By the end of the year, we plan to sell approximately 10,000 DeepView subscriptions and 20,000 Deepen AI Coach subscriptions.

Another key growth area is corporate wellness. We understand the numbers: more active and healthy employees work more productively, handle their tasks better, and stay with the company longer. Drawing on my personal experience creating corporate wellness programs in Austin, Texas, we can demonstrate this effect to companies through real data and measurable impact.