Have you been scouting for interesting and feasible workout sessions around your locality, but with no luck? Given how it’s natural to get absorbed in the daily grind, leaving you with little time for research or to get through to an ideal workout spaces in town, a volley of start-ups in the city are focusing on doing the hard work for you — by enabling users to access fitness and outdoor activities classes in and around their neighbourhood through just a tap on their app! With Bengaluru’s fitness freaks banking on the idea, we take a deeper look at some of the most popular arrangements in town...
“We wanted to help people find what exactly were they searching for, in terms of fitness. Fitness is still at a very nascent stage in India, despite the rapid mushrooming of gyms and other sports and fitness clubs. Hence, to enable users to find everything that was in tandem to what their needs were, is egged us to start out. Unlike how it was a decade ago, people start working out young today. Most of the people who access such services are between the age of 25 to 40 years,” opines Amaresh Ojha, CEO, Gympik, a Bengaluru-based online fitness platform, He adds,“The responses have been encouraging. On an average, at least 5,000 individuals are finding their fitness choices on our platform everyday.”
Interestingly, avenues of fitness are no longer restricted to strenuous workout sessions. Chethan Agarwal is one of the co-founders of Sportzify. This is a city-based online platform that helps users connect with sports that they are passionate about and reserve the nearest cricket, football and badminton clubs around one’s locality. He says, “It’s hard to keep the excitement going when it comes to gyming. Most gyms record a 70 per cent drop within two months of registration. Hence, having other options where one can go to a gym one day and play a sport the other day works best. Most platforms offer bookings on an hourly basis with competitive rates. The fact that you can track your activity works as a bonus.”
Even while things are looking bright for this burgeoning trend, there’s a flagging message which implies that these portals are just channels to a solution, and not the solution itself. “People can tap an app to access extra motivation, curated content and customised training plans for themselves. The idea is to help you find ways to get fit and it ends there. You can make use of everything you sign up for,” advises Saurabh Aggarwal, co-founder, Fitso (an online personal training app for all health and fitness needs).
