From corporate insurance to health and fitness may appear a curious sideways career move, but to Richard Davis, owner and managing director of VirtualGym TV, the two are a perfect mix.

Davis, who was responsible for the pension schemes of some major corporate clients, became increasingly aware of the encouragement from government for large businesses to take more responsibility for their employees’ mental and physical health.

As this trend coincided with the wholesale take-up of broadband technology, Davis identified the internet as an untapped, cost-effective medium for providing both individual and corporate health benefits.

“My lightbulb moment happened when a friend, a high-level instructor who was teaching me at the time, commented, ‘Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could teach people online?’ and it snowballed from there,” he says.

The following months were a whirlwind for Davis. Raising the start-up capital over the summer of 2007, he contracted out the web design in September and launched VirtualGym TV by the new year.

“It was an extremely tight and exhausting schedule, but we wanted to be market ready by January to capture the new year resolution bubble,” he says.

The company offers a wide variety of downloadable or streamed 45-60minute workout sessions with the UK’s top instructors that, through the use of the site’s virtual personal trainer software, are tailored to the individual client’s health, fitness and final objectives.

Individuals can choose to join by subscription or simply pay as they go, while corporate clients can purchase the number of logins required to meet their needs.

After a slow start, VirtualGym TV now has 600 individual subscribers and is growing, while Davis is in the final stages of negotiations with a number of corporate clients and has signed a reciprocal deal with an online women’s sports clothing supplier that should also drive traffic to the site. www.virtualgym.tv

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