Octiv closes eight-figure series A round with Knife Capital

The South African gym management software platform Octiv has reached a monumental milestone in closing their eight-figure series A funding round from a leading venture capital firm, Knife Capital.

The start-up previously raised seed capital from prominent South African angel investors and this round also included an angel investment from an executive at BVNK.

This investment will allow Octiv to fast-track its global expansion drive, add innovative product enhancements, and scale customer service levels to keep up with aggressive growth.

Octiv started as a workout tracking app for CrossFit gyms in South Africa. Mark Fawzy, chief executive and founder of Octiv, formulated this idea when his paperback fitness logbook succumbed to a wet towel in his gym bag.

Since then, Octiv has grown into an all-in-one cloud-based gym management platform that includes everything a gym or fitness studio needs to manage its day-to-day business activities. Their technology enhances the experience of human connection and community while supercharging their clients’ business growth potential and brand identity.

Amongst other things, Octiv software enables member management and billing, payment gateway integrations, scheduling, various programmes, lead management, task management, payroll, reporting and website integrations.

“A primary vision of Octiv is handing brick-and-mortar gyms and fitness studios a digital arm to run a seamless and more profitable business. We offer their members the ultimate personalised fitness experience,” says Fawzy.

His deep passion for entrepreneurship, fitness and technology was the recipe that ignited this innovative tech start-up.

Octiv successfully breached the South African borders, securing clients in over 27 countries, predominantly in Europe. Octiv’s ability to shift into international markets and gain traction in multiple countries demonstrate that the company’s scaling potential is significant even before growth funding.

“In the current economic climate, capital efficiency is key. We admire how Mark and his team have built Octiv into a lean global recurring revenue SaaS business with very little outside capital,” says Keet van Zyl, Knife Capital founding partner.

“We identified the potential in Octiv and its ever-striving objective of becoming a world-class leader in fitness software product development, while being able to humanise the software to ensure that it remains client-centric.”

This investment will accelerate Octiv’s expansion further, allowing the company to upscale its product team for more innovation while building out the sales function to onboard more gyms.

The global fitness industry is valued at $96 billion, with 230 million fitness facilities worldwide and a CAGR of 9.6%. Europe is leading the growth charge, which places Octiv in an ideal position to take advantage of this upward trend given the company’s established client base there. Knife Capital’s presence in the UK will also assist in accelerating Octiv’s European expansion strategy.

Knife Capital is a Cape Town and Jersey-based venture capital firm that accelerates the international expansion of African innovation-driven businesses by leveraging knowledge, networks, and funding. Knife Capital is closing out on Knife Fund III – a $50m VC Fund to invest behind the aggressive expansion of South African breakout companies that achieved a product-market fit as well as VC co-investments in the rest of Africa, thereby filling a critical follow-on funding gap.

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