Fitness Industry: Go Digital or Go Bust!

The 2020 Covid 19 Pandemic had a disastrous impact on the global fitness industry, national / international gym chains, boutique studios, independent instructors, gym aggregators and everyone in between struggled for survival from end of March (as indefinite lockdown began). Gyms were amongst the last category of business to open once the lockdown measures were lifted.

Most of the India gym aggregators including Growfitter, GymPik, FitPass, Fitternity or Book Your Gym had an overnight loss of revenue model. Global players like ClassPass valued over $1 billion (before the lockdown) saw 95% of its revenue dry up. It was time to re-imagine, reinvent and re-think the business model.

This is the turnaround story of GrowFitter, how they converted this pandemic into an opportunity and rebuild their business from the scratch. (Disclaimer: I have been associated with the company as an friend, advisor and sometimes mentor from the early days of their business).

As Co-founders Sam and Harshit, Head of Ops Satish and other senior team members got together to figure how to rebuild the business it was obvious the future was digital. They not only had to compete with other gym aggregators for the market share, they now also had to compete with other fitness or wellness companies like Cure.fit, Fittr or Golds Gym who were aggressively building an online presence with live virtual classes (both for Personal Training and Group Exercise Classes) and with individual instructors (Gym trainers, Zumba, Bokwa, Alo Yoga, Beledi instructors) who started taking classes on Zoom or similar apps.

This led to the birth of GrowFitter 3.0, an App meant for users to track their fitness and earn rewards as they do so. The new App was launched about 10 days back, with an expectation to acquire about 25,000 downloads in next 4 weeks.

What happened next was nothing less than a pleasant shock. The app was downloaded by more than 50,000 fitness enthusiasts in the 1st week. As I write this blog, the downloads have crossed 80,000 and there is no sign of slowing down.

Growfitter is now India’s Biggest Incentivized Wellness Platform with an aim to reward the consumer to stay fit! The rewards are the means to an end, to ensure that the user remains regular and motivated enough to adopt an active and healthy lifestyle. This strategy also reflects in a very healthy DAU.

While the value proposition of the App seems fairly simple, you download the app, use it to track your fitness regimen and you can achieve rewards like Apple iPhone 11 and many other exciting rewards. The App itself is a highly complex product with AI & ML at the heart of it's core offering.

• Select any outdoor activity from walking, running, cycling, workout to swimming or indoor activity like health quiz or virtual fitness.
• Complete your fitness activity successfully & get an active day.
• Select your goal & earn assured exciting rewards every week to complete your goal.

As an added benefit if you refer the App (with your own reference code), to your family / friends and they download it, you get reward points which can be redeemed for Apple AirPods 2, Subscription to Netflix, Disney Hotstar, Fitness bands, headphones, fitness apparel, health supplements, skin care products and many other goodies.

In case you download the GrowFitter app, use my referral code to active your account: ADARDVRX

This is just a beginning of the 1st phase; it is now building it's offering to provide 1:1 online personal training, on-demand workout videos, and insurance cover. The consumer is spoilt for choice today, she / he can workout with the best of instructors on the phone or laptop via an app, she / he can also join a virtual fitness class anytime they prefer, besides having access to millions of recorded classes.

While the future is digital, it would make sense to be a market leader in 1 category. Sticking to incentivized wellness as a primary offering seems to be a smart move for GrowFitter. I expect other Gym aggregators to copy this model; that will also be a testament to commercial possibilities of this business strategy.

Over the next few months as consumers get vaccinated and start going back to brick and mortar gyms, there may be a drop in the number and popularity of live virtual classes. But the same consumer would still be motivated by a reward for achieving his / her fitness and wellness goals, this seems to be a winning USP for Growfitter as a business. It would be interesting to see how things unfold, if they can continue to give great rewards, if they can build a library of world class content and have the technology to give consumers an amazing experience on the live virtual classes.

All said and done, these are interesting times for the consumer and also a turning point for the fitness industry. It's time to not just go digital but innovate to ensure that you're still relevant amongst global players.

About me

My writing are based on my learning’s over last 2.5 decades. Happy to exchange ideas and thoughts. I write mostly about subjects related to my work but sometimes just-like-that as well. I can be reached at @AdarshNigam on Twitter or Linkedin.

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