ROAD TO FITNESS
FITNESS ENTREPRENEUR DIVYA HIMATSINGKA IS BUSTING HEALTH MYTHS WITH HER GYM, SKULPT
“WHEN I’M IN THE GYM, I THINK the last thing I concentrate on is my workout,” says Divya Himatsingka, 40, director of Ideal Gymnasium which owns Skulpt, one Kolkata’s first and largest gyms in the city. “Out of that one hour on the floor, I would probably spend 40 minutes managing the gym and 20 on my workout. It’s better than doing rounds I think because you see it from the perspective of the client,” she says. She admits to having become something of stickler for detail over the years.
Himatsingka wasn’t ever a fitness buff. “I wasn’t into fitness before marriage. But my husband, Nakul (Himatsingka MD, Ideal Group) wanted to do something related to it after he became quite the health enthusiast when at New York University. So I kind of went along and we opened the first Gold’s Gym in the city and the first sub franchisee of Gold’s Gym in the country,” she says. She trained for a year in Mumbai, watching people and seeing how a gym is run. Kolkata’s first Gold’s Gym, spread out over 8,000 sq ft, overlooking the busy business district of Kolkata took off to rave reviews. It has nearly 700 members now, including many of the city’s elite and is doing enough business to get pretty complacent with. But that isn’t how Divya Himatsingka runs things. She took it on as a challenge for newer things. Gold’s Gym was reborn as Skulpt in 2014. “By now we had built an identity and we were confident we no longer needed the branding of Golds,” she says. It’s been a year-and-a-half since Gold’s Gym on Exide was reborn as Skulpt but none of the older members left because of the branding change. “People are a lot more conscious now. We have seen the awareness level of the city change. Now we have marathon runners, people prepping for Everest base camp and Anatarctica in our gym,” says Himatsingka. How does one prepare for these things? “The Everest base camper’s training was rigorous. We had to carry sand bags, wear an oxygen limiting mask and walk at an almost 60 degree incline on the treadmill,” she says. It’s always been a mantra at Skulpt to keep things interesting for the members. “We do boot camps on the terrace in the winters. There are spontaneous competitions held on the floor for different exercises and those who perform the best win movie tickets. Some members who have formed a group amongst themselves often ask the trainers to go for outdoor training and runs,” she says.
Armed with ten years of experience, Skulpt intends to spread its wings to tier II and tier III cities. “We want to open franchises of Skuplt in cities like Durgapur Asanasol and Rourkela and run it in the form of express gyms,” she says. These franchises will be smaller—over 2,000 to 3,000 sq ft and offer almost all the facilities at Skulpt’s flagship outlet, barring the spa or massages. “I want to spread this culture of fitness to the rest of the country too,” she says simply.
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