Building a new ‘Cult’
Bengaluru-based CureFit focuses on body, mind and food to make people healthy through its integrated service, writes Alnoor Peermohamed
Bengaluru-based CureFit is looking at body, mind, and food to make people healthy through its integrated service.
ALNOOR PEERMOHAMED writes
In health and wellness start-up CureFit’s Bengaluru office, employees have a little competition going on among themselves to see who is the fittest. Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori, the founders, are proudly placed in the number one and two spots, respectively.
Practisewhatyoupreach, aphrase oftenlostamongthetopexecutivesin companies, seemstoresonatestrongly amongthoseatCureFit. Thestart-up, focusedonpromotinghealthierlifestyles amongthemasses, sayswherebetterto startthanhome.
Bansal, who founded online fashion start-upMyntra and sold it to Flipkart, and Nagori, who started as employee no 33 at Flipkart and rose to be its chief business officer, have been able to raise sufficient funds to run the capital-intensive business. Its investors — Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital and IDG Ventures— have put a combined $45 million in two rounds for the venture that has online and offline play. Opportunity India’s wellness and preventive health care market is expected to reach ~1.5 lakh crore by 2020, according to a January 2017 report by FICCI and E&Y, as more people look to take care of their health by taking up exercise or yoga and consuming healthy food. This market was ~85,000 crore in 2015.
CureFitseesanopportunitytoofferan integratedservice— cult.fitforfitness, mind.fitformentalwellnessandeat.fitfor healthyfood— tomid-levelandsenior executiveswholookatthistoachieve moreintheircareerorbusiness. Forthis, it issettingupfully-equippedgyms, centres formentalwellnessandkitchensthat cookcustomisedfoodforusers. Sofar, Nagorisays, thereisnosingleplayerwith anintegratedofferingtoaperson interestedinimprovinghisfitness.
“We are building an online and offline enterprise to offer physical fitness, mental wellness and health food in a vertically integrated manner where we own all the supply,” says Nagori. “We have started with one part of Bengaluru; we will expand market by market.”
Business model
Cult is its new playground— this is the push the company is looking at to tap people with high-paying jobs who lead a sedentary lifestyle. Be it the start-up and IT crowd in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Delhi or the financial and advertising industry analysts in Mumbai.
Unlike traditional gyms, Cult will have offline centres that will have a group class led by a trainer, who will nudge people to compete and play games with each other to achieve fitness. Food and mental wellness comes as a package that will look at an individual holistically.
“We have a strong focus on building a training programme. Anyone who becomes a Cult trainer goes through four weeks of intense training and it’s likewise for chefs,” says Nagori. “What we want to turn it into is something aspirational. Athletes in schools and colleges should be looking to join us right after they’re done with their studies.”
Withenoughcapitalinhand, CureFit hasacquiredexistinggyms— theTribe FitnessClub, a1000YogaandKristys Kitchen— togetaheadstart. Ithas 16offlinecentresinBengaluruandplans tohave29bytheyear-end. InOctober, a CultcentrewillbeopenedinGurgaonto targetaround100centresby2018-end. It expectstoservecloseto25,000customers daily. IthassignedupactorHrithik Roshanasabrandambassador.“Thisisa capex-heavybusinessbutalsovery profitable. ThecapexpaybackforCultis lessthan12months,” saysNagori.“Cult acrossthe16centresisprovidingusfree cashflowofover~1crore.”
Challenges
CureFithasstartedwithabang, starting withBengaluruandlookingtoexpandinto othercities. Fornow, itoffersacombination ofatechnology-enabledappthatnudges peoplewhohavesignedupforthe programmetotakeuptheofflinefitness courses. Italsolooksatsubscriptionsthat willprovideapredictablerevenue.
Existing chains such as Talwalkars, Gold Gym and Snap Fitness, which have a huge customer base, could replicate the CultFit model, having established as brands themselves. “Cure.fit has certainly differentiated itself so far in all respects in a space which is not new so that is highly commendable. However, for it to be truly successful, it will call for a significant change in the attitude of urbane Indians on how they view personal fitness,” says Dinesh Goel, Bengaluru-based angel investor and start-up mentor.