Cult.fit – The Innovative Start-up that Revolutionized Health & Fitness Industry!

1. Overview

Physical fitness and mental wellness are still the most overlooked aspects in countries like India. From youngsters to adults, people don’t realize the seriousness of the problem until it occurs to them. However, in the last two years, there has been an increase in awareness towards achieving holistic well-being, especially among youngsters &millennials which is evident from the increasing amount of expenditure on fitness. But, how did this change come? Well, if there is any one brand that has disrupted the fitness industry, it is CureFit.  Curefit or CultFit is a fitness & wellbeing start-up that has established its name as the top player through its innovative offerings & technological transformation.

Founded in the year2016 by two ex-Flipkart employees Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori, CureFit is a health & fitness start-up that is headquartered in Bengaluru India but maintains offices all across major cities like Hyderabad, Delhi NCR, Gurgaon, Chennai, etc. Primarily, it works in the fitness and wellness category with a vision to make health and fitness easier in a fun way. Any user could choose multiple workout formats from Zumba, Yoga, Football, Boxing, Strength & Conditioning, HRX, Prowl, Running, and more as per his/her liking or convenience at home or home workouts or even both. Though, it started by offering offline classes, which has expanded to its online as well as offline training classes. Now, it is a one-stop destination for fitness as well as mental health, primary care, and healthy eating.

Curefit entered into the unicorn club reaching a valuation of $1.5B on Nov 10, 2021, after successfully raising a sum of $145 M from seven investors, which included investors like Zomato who contributed $50 million in cash along with other investors like San Francisco based South Park Commons Opportunities Fund II, Temasek Holdings and Accel.

2. CureFit-How does it works?

Curefit is a health & wellness fitness platform that emphasizes a holistic approach toward exercisewhich is offered online as well as an offline mode through a range of gyms & fitness centers and their growing number of trainers & experts in the company. Further, there are three other business verticals- Eat. Fit, Cure.fit &Mind. Fit, that are offered to ensure a digitally-driven ecosystem that connects with a person’s physical fitness, mental well-being & healthy food. All these services have integrated all health verticals into a sole platform that promotes an active lifestyle, like health check-ups, rigorous workouts, and meditation.

The platform offers a mixed platter of its fitness programs that include exercising, yoga, food recipes and tips at home, and access to any of Cure. Fit fitness centers, as per the choice of the member. These membership programs are-Cultpass Elite, Cultpass Pro, Cultpass Live, and cult Transform, a mixture of offline & online training that come in a3-month, 6-month, and annual membership plan which could be obtained by signing through the platform, choosing the preferred program and making payment online. Simple!

Cult. fitservices have gained special importance, especially at the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, and have helped people who are battling problems like stress & anxiety issues, and have made people take care of their health by making it more accessible at home and affordable. This led to rapid growth & tremendous success growth for the business during & post-lockdown period.

Naresh Krishnaswamy, Growth & Marketing Head, Cure. Fit explains “CultFit has shown promising growth in two three months in the post-lockdown period. Before Cult. Fit used to have 250,000 paid subscribers but within two months Cult. fit has been able to get more than a 1Million+ new subscribers to try its new digital products and their response was quite positive. Cult. fit (the new name for Cure. Fit) started its paid version in May 2021 for its 1Million+ who tried its products for free, and eventually, the business was able to get about 100,000 paid subscribers for its digital fitness offerings.

3. CureFit- Vision & Mission

The fundamental belief behind building Cure. Fit is that “Fitness is fitness and more of an approach to building a healthcare ecosystem. Well-being does not only imply physical health but also mental well-being &spiritual health – if a person is not growing in any of these aspects, he is not fit”.

Cure. Fit drives its preventive healthcare philosophy through engagement, coaching, and delivery, through a combination of online and offline channels, which comes from a combination of its complex technology and uncompromised customer service, which sets it apart from others in the industry.

Cure. Fit offers its products & services to encourage people to lead a healthy lifestyle, improve their overall health, reduce their risks of catching chronic diseases, and enable a long stress-free life through all its offerings on a single platform. For rich user experience, the platform has been intelligently designed with innovative technologies and all the offerings have been integrated to offer end-to-end proactive health management to consumers.Mukesh Bansal, Co-founder & CEO states “At Cure. fit, we strive to make it easier for people to maintain a healthy lifestyle across various aspects of life such as physical fitness, mental agility, and healthy eating through its single platform.

Thus, Cult. fit works to transform the traditional meaning of exercising in a fun manner through its trainer-led, group workout classes, offering weight management tips, daily food which is fresh & tasty, counseling & consultations for health, and meditation & yoga classes for stress management.

4. CureFit- How did it Start?

Mukesh Bansal & Ankit Nagori were two ex-employees of Flipkart who decided to start up their “holistic healthcare venture” that could create awareness regarding the importance of health and fitness as essential parts of life and encourage them to adopt a healthy lifestyle in their daily lives. It was clear that the healthcare start-up would be a never-before-seen company that could revolutionize the healthcare stream in India. At that time, most of the health & fitness industries were unorganized with limited organized players like Talwalkar’s, Fitness One, and Fitness First.

The fitness industry was largely underpenetrated as compared to its western counterparts with a huge growth potential due to the increasing conscience of the youth population towards health, appearance, and fitness. Therefore, despite the availability of certainapplication-based start-ups ventured into this space since the late 2010s, the health & fitness industry was yet to be disrupted in the country, and the founders decided to tap on this opportunity.

Therefore, initially, the co-founders started by renting a small space in Bangalore’s Hosur-Sarjapur Layout, a famous hub for start-ups, and acquiring two workout studios, Cult & Tribe by Rishabh Telang and Deepak Poduval’s, without any equipment to test the minimal yet dedicated workout theory in 2016. Also, they adopted & mastered the approach of group fitness classes, which was rare and unorganized until then. Interestingly, they received an overwhelming response from their audience. As a result, they launched three workout stations and launched their first website which was followed by an app, which turned out to be a huge game changer for the start-up.

In 2021, Cure. Fit further come-up with certain significant changes in the start-up business that included changing of brand name( Cure. Fit became Cult. Fit) and increasing the horizons of healthcare & fitness- preventive, curative, and diagnostic.The preventive aspect at CureFit comprised of physical fitness throughCult.fit, eating healthy & nutritious food via Eat. Fit& stress management through Mind. Fit. Similarly, under the curative and diagnostic wing, they had Care. Fit, which provided personalized healthcare solutions in 2021, which are currently under expansion mode. In the words of Founder Amit Nagori “Health is never standalone. It is a complex function of diet, fitness, mental wellness, and overall wellbeing of an individual which needs to be holistic”.

5. CureFit- Founder & Team

Mukesh Bansal

Mukesh Bansal is the CEO  & Co-founder of Cult-Fit. He is essentially a technology entrepreneur who pursued his B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur and collected various experiences across various business sectors includingengineering, product management, and leadership rolesworking across four different early-stage tech Startups in the Bay Area. In 2007, he founded one of the biggest e-fashion retail start-ups Myntra in that was later acquired by Flipkart 2014. He was working as a Chief Business Officer at Flipkart when he quit launching his new business venture Cure. Fit. Under his guidance & leadership, Cult-Fit has been instrumental in changing the landscape of India’s health and fitness industry.

Ankit Nagori

Ankit Nagori is also the Co-founder of Cult. fit who completed his Bachelor’s from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. He started his career Marketing Intern at ESCP Europe, and then went on to found a series of business ventures Youthpad.com, Simply Sports Foundation & Cure Foods apart from Cult. Fit. Like Mukesh, he was also working as a Chief Business Officer at Flipkart which he quit to found Cult. Fit in 2016.

Considering the huge opportunities and scope in the healthy food business segment, Amit Nagori also founded his ownhealthy food business, Cure foods in Feb 2021. However, in October 2021, multiple reports were speculating the exit of Amit Nagori from Cult. Fit over differences with Mukesh Bansal. But, a company spokesperson rubbished the rumors stating “Ankit Nagori is not exiting Cult. fit, he will continue on the board of Cure. Fit with his stake and will continue to work with the other co-founder on strategic business matters.

Apart from these, he is an avid sportsperson and fitness enthusiast, who used to play cricket seriously all through school and made through the district team, which went on to earn him Captaincy in his college cricket team, and he continued to play till he moved to Bengaluru with Flipkart and subsequently to Cure. Fit, until the pandemic happened. That’s when he adopted badminton, which according to him is a part of his regular lifestyle.

6. Cure.Fit- Business & Revenue Model

Cure. Fit has witnessed a unique journey in terms of expansion & funding as compared to other health-tech start-up businesses. From the beginning, Cure.Fit had an edge over its competitors due to better funding a stronger base of the pre-established base of investors of Myntra and the acquisition of start-ups like Tribe Fitness, a1000Yoga, and Kristy’s Kitchen, etc. helped it to get access to better resources & technology making it even bigger. Cure. Fit offers an integrated platform to enable a healthy living lifestyle and all-inclusive fitness through healthy food &mental well-being.

Speaking of business model, the business model of CureFit is primarily B2C which is an innovative combination of coaching, engagement, and delivery which is offered as a combination of online and offline channels. CureFit has four business verticals,each of which focuses on different aspects of health aspects through four platforms to empower a healthy lifestyle, which have been described further below-

• Cult.Fit- This business vertical is the prime segment of The Cure.Fitthat offers a whole range of fitness activities through a mix of workouts which help to enhance health with the help of some best trainers available & group workouts where people could socialize as well as have fun while exercising which could either be done at a fitness center or home with the help of DIY workout videos.
• Mind. Fit– This business segment focuses on mental well-being with a range of activities like yoga, meditation, and therapywith different formats like sleep improvement, focus management, the combined exercise of body & mind, etc. as per the format chosen by the member.
• Eat.Fit– This platform offers online delivery of healthy, fresh & tasty meals which are delivered based on the subscription plan chosen by the user. These meals change regularly among a variety of cuisines & menus which are wholesome as well as nutritious.
• Cure. Fit-This platform offers healthcare facilities like health check-ups through video conferencing, in-house pharmacy & diagnostics facilities for lab –testing, Ultrasound, ECG, diagnostic screening packs, etc. to the customers.

Revenue Model

Cure.Fit works on a B2C subscription-based model under which the platform offers membership based on various subscription plans which vary from one month to a year depending on the needs of consumers. These plans offer both digitals as well as offline services to the customers so that they could choose based on their convenience and liking.

In 2021, Cure. Fit also ventured into the D2C business model in 2021 with the launch of its online food delivery platform Eat. Fit offers delivery of fresh & healthy food to its consumers, and its e-retail store Cure.Fit, which offers fitness apparel & accessories.

In FY21, the fitness vertical of the business turned out to be the biggest revenue driver which generated up to 80% of the business revenues.However, the quick online pivot could not save the business from a slump, since the collection from the same dropped by 59% resulting in a revenue of Rs 128.41 crore from Rs 310 crore earned in FY20. Further, Cure. Fit also reported a 2.2 times YoY growth in the revenues from the sale of fitness apparel & equipment under its brand Cult sport which amounted to Rs 12.85 crore during FY21 as more & more people moved toward home fitness equipment and merchandise

Though, the Eat. Fit vertical had generated a revenue of Rs. 171 crores to the business in FY20 but since the Eat.Fit business was announced as an independent entity in October 2020. Thus, revenue from the sale of food was reduced to 90% reaching Rs 16.8 crore during FY21. Finally, collections from healthcare diagnostics and other related services also decreased by 63% amounting to Rs 3.36 crore in FY21 as compared to Rs 9.20 crore in FY20.

7. CureFit-Expenses & Revenue Breakdown

While many healthcare & pharma businesses witnessed skyrocketing revenues during the pandemic, contact-first businesses like fitness & hospitality businesses among others were severely affected due to a series of lockdowns & restricted movements. Even some had to shut down their businesses while others had to cut down their expenses to lower their expenses & losses.

In FY 2021, CureFit’s overall revenue declined with a sharp drop of 67% in the total revenue amounting to Rs. 294.9 Cr in FY21 as compared to INR 567.4 Cr in the last year. However, the company managed to lower its costs through cut down on its expenses resulting in around a 42% decline in expenses from Rs. 1,319.3 Cr in FY20 to Rs. 756.4 Cr in FY21 this year, while the consolidated loss after tax of Curefit stood at INR 671 Cr for the year ended as on March 2022.

CureFit’s Revenue Breakdown

In FY 2021, this health & fitness unicorn managed to earn a total revenue up to Rs. 294.9 Crores, out of which the total revenue from operations fell to Rs. 161.3 Cr in FY21, a 67.4% drop from Rs. 495.8 Cr in FY20. Similarly, other income that included total interest income &net gain on sale of investments, and liabilities, stood at Rs. 133.2 Crores which was higher as compared to Rs. 71.5 Cr from other sources of income in FY20.

CureFit Financials

Curefit’s Expenses Breakdown

Since CureFit was shut for most of the year in 2020, the business expenses dropped to Rs. 756.4 Cr in FY21 as compared to Rs.1, 319 Cr in FY20. The start-up also took steps to reduce costs on employee benefit expensesto tide over the COVID-induced crisis by laying off employees that reachedRs. 210.8 Crores as compared to Rs. 328.5Cr.  Further, the start-up also cut down costs on its promotional activities by 63.7% to INR 71.4 Cr in FY21 from Rs. 197 Cr in FY20.

8. CureFit- Growth & Challenges

With its innovative business ideas combined with solid backing from investors like Axis and HDFC & Myntra, CureFit became one of the most popular businesses in the fitness industry and even made to the list of ‘Highest Funded Start-ups of 2018’.Having said that, CureFit also witnessed the worst during the pandemic made it make some bigger changes in its business model

Cure. the fit was quick to realize that digital was here to stay and started focusing on the improvement of its digital platform for more user engagement. It launched around 10 new digital services during the lockdowns such as including online doctor teleconsultations, online nutritionists, online therapists, online personal training, online medical diagnostic services, fitness & health-related e-commerce store, etc, that could ensure a smoother transition of employees from offline to online.It also widened its business offerings with three more platforms Eat. Fit, Mind. Fit & Cure.Fit, which is effectively leveraged after the COVID-19 outbreak.

For the coming years, Cure. Fit aims to get at least 50% hold of the Indian fitness & well-being industry apart from a full return to normalcy post the recovery from losses. With fortunate access to a cap table of marquee investors, luck has been in favor of the start-up.

Curefit, with its privileged Naresh Krishnaswamy, Growth & Marketing Head, says “During the lockdown, we offered three paid plans for 3/6/12 months at ₹1,299, ₹1,799 and ₹2,999 respectively, for which Cure. Fit garnered one lakh subscribers.With its innovative marketing strategies & promotional ventures, Cure. Fit is now operational with more than 180 fitness centers across the nation with more than 1.5 million new subscribers post-pandemic.

Thus, before lockdowns, 100% of the business revenue used to flow from offline, but post-lockdown 90% of revenue came from online & 10% from offline, which has changed to 80 percent digital and 20 percent offline. This ratio is expected to change further as more fitness centers reopen in the coming months.

Employee Lay-offs& Business Shutdowns

As part of its survival & revival strategy, CureFit had to curb its expenses & lower its costs. Thus, it went ahead with mass employee lay-offs in May 2021, when it laid off almost 800 employees (10% of the total workforce) from its staff along with pay cuts across levels as its gyms remained shut.

Within the next two months, Curefit reportedly furloughed another 500 employees. Additionally, it exited from small cities in the country including a shutdown of business in UAE which it first entered in 2019. All this helped CureFit to reduce its annual business expenditure by 42.7% to Rs 756.4 crore from Rs 1319.3 crore spent in total during FY20.

Re-Entering International foray

Nevertheless, the start-up has reportedly re-entered the international market by launching its digital products for free in the USA along with other English-speaking nations two months ago. The products include Cult. Live classes, online mental wellness programs (yoga and meditation), and healthy food recipes (nutrition and diet plans), which has received a positive response with one lakh downloads already.

Expansion Plan of Cure.Fit

According to reports, Cure. Fit has entered an MOU deal with Tata Digital in pursuance of which the latter will acquire the former for which it has already will invest $175 million in fitness startup Curefit. Mukesh Bansal, CEO  & Co-founder of CureFit will reportedly join Tata Digital as president and continue to lead his company as well.Tata Group to acquire the same and merge it into the digital division of Tata.Mukesh explains “Tata Digital is working on an inspiring idea to create an innovative next-generation platform which will, in turn, help Cure. Fit to scale its offerings to its customers across the nation”.Further, the expansion plan for Cure. Fit under the flagship of Tata Digital has also been churned out-

• Introduction of a ready-to-eat category
• Offering a whole new range of workout apparel& equipment
• Introduction of online doctor consultation facility
• Assistance in the consultation of super-specialists online for its users
• Expansion to 20 cities by covering 200 outlets in 2022

9. Curefit- Key Competitors

• IFiT Health & Fitness app
• MyFitnessPal
• HealthifyMe
• NooM

10. CureFit-Marketing Strategies

The marketing strategies of CureFit have been widely appreciated by its users. In 2022,CureFit was even awarded the Marketers’ Excellence Awards 2022. Let’s take a sneak into the key marketing strategies practiced by this fitness unicorn-

I. User Engagement -Over years, Cure. Fit has been largely successful in acquiring customers through its innovative & interesting market tactics that include the following-

• Gamification – Cure. fit encourages users to display their badges& weekly ranks secured to their user friends.
• Healthy & Fit families – Cure. fit encourages families to join the platform and keeps them motivated through its unique programs like a superfamily week, etc.

II. Digital Marketing Tactics–

• Content Marketing-Cure.Fit has been able to attract a large audience due to its prompt replies to user queries. They also post website material that influences the consumers to try their fitness services & accessories.
• Social Media Marketing– Cure. Fit has a way to win people’s hearts through its engaging & committed content sharing on popular social media channels, which helps them in the identification of customers (i.e. those who take fitness seriously) and widens its reach for targeting new customers. Presently, Cult. Fit has a following above 3.5 Lakh followers on Facebook and Instagram, where it regularly shares updated information, submits event invitations, healthy recipes to eat & drink, shares customer reviews, etc.
• Offline Marketing– Apart from leveraging cutting-edge technologies to target their audience, Cure. Fit has also employed offline marketing strategies for its business. It regularly assigns its fitness experts to hold talk sessions on leading radio channels.
• Influencer Marketing– Cure.Fit understood that there could be no better way of making people understand the benefit of fitness & exercising than through fitness models & celebrities. It collaborated with multiple celebrities like Hrithik Roshan, Milind Soman, Tiger Shroff, and P.V. Sindhu among other prominent celebrities. Even, Hrithik Roshan has been roped in a five years agreement to act as a brand ambassador.

III. Advertising Campaigns

#FORTHELOVEOFFIT–Cult.Fit launched this campaign in the year 2018 that aimed to break the barrier of fitness just to physical fitness. As fitness includes physical, emotional, and dietary fitness, the campaign demonstrated the complete range of deals from the Cure. Fit app, trying them to understand that fitness is more open and fun and offering the message that “If you are not comfortable with attending doctor or physician appointments, Cure. Fit will help you”!

 #CULTLIVE–This campaign was targeted to the consumers to demonstrate the dedication of CultFit trainers towards the health & fitness of its users including the encouragement provided for the live workout.

11. Cure.Fit-Funding& Acquisitions

Cure. Fit has acquired 14 companies to date. The latest businesses to be acquired by CureFit include Urban Terrain on December 20, 2021, and then it acquired Gold’s Gym on February 14, 2022. The highlights of all the acquisitions made by Curefit have been provided below-

To date, CureFit has raised a total sum of $624.6M over 11 funding rounds. The latest tranche of investment came in Nov 2021 in a Series F funding round where CureFit raised a sum of $145million from seven investors including the food delivery giant Zomato, Singapore’s sovereign fund Temasek &South Park Commons. This was a cross-selling deal between Cure. Fit & Zomato, in which the latteracquired the fitness arm of the food-tech giant, Fitso for $50 mn and infused another $50 mn. This deal also made Cure. Fit to turn the 36^th unicorn in 2021 and 77^th unicorn in overall India with a valuation of $1.56 bn, on November 10, 2021.

12. CureFit- Future Plans

Therefore, Cure.Fit has grown to become India’s leading fitness & mental well-being start-up and has gained customers out of its innovative products & services & marketing strategies, despite the challenging slow-down faced by the business during the pandemic era. Moreover, it has been successful in onboarding new customers and retaining the older ones and has ended up being endorsed by a large group of customers.

In the coming years, CureFit or CultFit has plans to mark its presence in more cities, widen its consumer base, and expand its market presence to up to 50% of the Indian fitness market share. Not only this, with an expected growth of the global healthcare market by three-fold to ₹8.6 trillion by 2022, Cure. Fit has a lot to look forward to in near future. Finally, after signing a merger deal with Tata Digital, CureFit will have solid backing from investors and better resources for expansion. Thus, the coming years look promising in terms of revenues & growth for Cure.Fit.