Student company Bearn, winner of the Brilliant Young Entrepreneurs Award competition, run by Hyundai Europe with Junior Achievement Young Enterprise, have just returned from Lisbon, where they took part in the European Enterprise Challenge 2015.

The two student members of the team, who received €15,000 for winning the local competition, said the international event was a great eye-opener for their company. “We were impressed by the way other start-ups tackle challenges and the creativity behind their exhibition stands. Talking to people who have been through the same process we have when we started our company was a great motivation and learning experience we will treasure for the rest of our lives,” the students said on their return.

The students hope to be able to kickstart their company into operation shortly.

Bearn was conceived to incentivise users through rewards as they progress through their exercise plan. The students built an online fitness platform motivating users to exercise more and eat healthy.

This is achieved by pushing the user to reach his daily goals with personalised notifications and rewards and through friendly challenges and competitions. The rewards offered include vouchers and discounts from leading health and fitness stores that should further help people maintain a healthy lifestyle.

“The Lisbon challenge was a great experience for Bearn. Being surrounded by like-minded and goal-driven entrepreneurs encouraged us to strive towards creating an even better company. We learnt a great deal from our judges, who provided us with useful feedback that will help us improve our product by offering advice on additional features, opening us up to other markets and target audiences,” the students said.

Seeking to harness today’s technology to launch programmes that inspire and stimulate, the team thought of the concept Run to Eat, whereby one earns a digital currency for exercising and then redeems points for healthy food.

This idea developed into Burn to Earn – burning calories to earn rewards, which led the students to name their company Bearn. The platform promotes healthy behaviour by rewarding and motivating people to maintain a physically active lifestyle.

The platform consists of a web portal and a mobile application that work seamlessly together by tracking the user’s daily activities, while offering moment-based rewards, for example, right after a hard workout.

The app will also be used to view daily statistics and to redeem the earned rewards at the respective merchant. The web portal, based on a plug-in system, is made up of three main sections for a user: a personal dashboard, groups and events, with each section offering a variety of features.

Being a plug-in system, users can pick and choose the features to create a personalised portal. Businesses that would like to advertise on the platform by offering rewards to users have a specific section in the portal dedicated to them.

The team was formed while sketching at a design studio, sharing a love for entrepreneurship and a passion to tackle global problems like obesity. Since the first two members come from a design background, they each recruited another member who helped develop their project. “Building a strong team was a crucial part for our enterprise,” they said.

“Clearly defining our product and how it would work for a broad audience was a challenging task,” the students admitted.

However, in the initial phases, they said the hardest part was to find a gap in the market and create a unique selling point that helped them differentiate themselves from the competition.

“Once that was defined, it was all about working towards creating our product and pitching it. But with the help of our mentors, introduced to us through the start-up programme, we managed to solve and learn from each problem we came across.

The start-up programme was also a challenging competition that pushed the team members to the limit and helped them realise their entrepreneurial dreams.

The students hope to continue working hard at building their product and meeting potential users and business to create a controlled testing ground. Their aim is to launch the Bearn platform early next year.

www.bearn.me