General Degree

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Victoria Repa eager to read-business-Books as a child

The Bbc , the weekly-in-chief-series-profiles of various executives from all over The World . This Week , we speak with Ukrainian businessmen Victoria Repa, the founder of the weight-loss and fitness app BetterMe.

Victoria Repa had an unlikely life for a successful tech Entrepreneur , She grew up in a Tiny Village in the Russian-speaking East of Ukraine.

There were only 12 children in your class at the middle school, and the resources were limited. "Would teach only the last 20 Minutes in The Winter ," recalls the 27-year-old, "because we don't have all the heaters. "

The School has no Computer, so The Future -tech entrepreneurs do not benefit from all the IT classes.

However, there was no shortage of Books and your passion which devours those who the business was.

your favorite author is the famous American investor Warren Buffett was. The Most important lesson of all, the Victoria absorbed by the so-called "Sage of Omaha" was that in order to know to be successful at anything in life, absolutely everything about the subject.

She wanted to come One Day follow in his footsteps and become a successful Entrepreneur .

pictured your old school, was not heated in The Winter

Another lasting memory from your youth of the "sense of pain" you felt for being overweight.

"I was born in A Family where everyone is overweight, always had," She says. "My Mother always told me 'there's nothing you can do, it is our problem in the family, and that's it'. "

But as Victoria the course of their teenage years, they came to feel they could Do Something about it. And if it was successful, it could make you happier.

Looking Back , She says it was this experience, create for The First time, you think about a day of business around fitness and well-being.

"For me, it is always create such as a mission to find tools for people who your ideal state of body and mind. "

But in her small Ukrainian school, such a mission seemed far-fetched. And so you put it on the back of your mind. After excelling in your exams, you will have a General Degree at your local University, Donetsk National. She then won a full paid scholarship to study business and financial economics at Kyiv School of Economics in the Ukrainian capital.

With most of their age statements enjoyed in a safe, well-paid jobs, Victoria followed The Crowd of people. She took a position in the Finance Department of the consumer-goods giant Procter & Gamble.

The Job brought financial benefits that their parents could only dream of. However, Victoria had the feeling of being full and totally satisfied.

Victoria , shown here with fellow students, won a scholarship to study at the Kiev School of Economics, one of The Most prestigious universities in Ukraine

She remembered the plans She had in school, following in the footsteps of their business heroes, and build a great company from nothing. She didn't want to continue to be a corporate employee.

This Was in the year 2016, when She was 24. "I have no family to support, so I thought, 'I'm young, I can still take risks'," She says.

then, The Massive growth in smartphone use was, of course, clear that the app market offers a variety of opportunities for start-up companies.

So Victoria decided to leave her secure job to try to fulfill your childhood ambition.

She wanted to create an app that can help people to lose weight, and help to heal The Pain She had felt as a child. The following Warren Buffett 's advice, She was in a market you understand.

Based in Kiev, in which you along with your co-founder Vitaly Laptenok. He had experience creating video content for social-media-marketing-campaigns.

While the Ukrainian capital is home to software companies like Epam, Luxoft, and the Global logic, the outsourcing is a national organization working on behalf of a multi, it's not developed tech start-up in the tech scene.

BetterMe apps are popular around The World

But while Victoria and Vitaly has an ecosystem of agile start-ups to lean on, in terms of reaching your desired market, your geographic location, was not a problem. Thanks to Social Media and Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store, you knew, you customers could reach all over The World .

to note, Therefore, that fitness and well-being content has been gaining great traction on sites like Instagram, especially in the USA, you are about drumming up interest in The First iteration of the app, as BeautyHub.

But still on their feet, it fell flat. This didn't faze Victoria , took another piece of advice from business Books - "fail fast and fail cheap".

As the products go, the apps come with lots of overheads. If you die, a death that you move on quickly, She says.

It was in the year of 2018, you and Vitaly ' app, then BetterMe called, began to have success. With a personal fitness and diet courses, to increase the number of users started strongly by positive word-of-mouth.

Additional features:

Today, despite strong competition from rivals such as MyFitnessPal, My diet Coach, and Lose It, BetterMe five sister-in apps have now been downloaded More Than 40 million times.

It has 500,000 paying subscribers, around 80% of them are women, and an annual turnover of More Than $60m (£51m). It has the headquarters in Kyiv and Cyprus.

- Lauren Ryan, a leisure analyst at research group Mintel leisure, says that this has helped increase the popularity of BetterMe, and other health and fitness apps, is The High price of gym membership.

"the cost of the membership fees, and work is not a rich life style, my, Fitness Studios are a viable option for many," She says. "[So] demand for cost-effective 'pocket personal Trainer' as grown.

"And 16-34s are most interested in it, digital fitness products, indicating that the trend is here. "

to grow As a BetterMe more, Victoria says She has a "chief-everything" type, of the chief executive, to Stand Back now in the situation a little, and let your 80-strong workforce to get on with things.

While the success of the app has made you feel a lot better about herself, She says that what gives her The Greatest satisfaction out of your job is to show the user posting pictures of their weight loss.

"Before and after pictures that mean more to me than the revenue graph," She says.

follow reporter Dougal on Twitter :

obesity, female entrepreneurs, kyiv, fitness trackers, fitness, ukraine, weight loss

Source of news: bbc.com