Being born in a middle class family, just like any regular Indian guy, I had average aspirations to begin with. So, I became a software engineer and my tryst with this short-lived passion of mine lasted for almost a decade. In these ten years, I worked with few Blue Chip companies like Microsystems, Aris Global, Iron Mountain, Cisco and Intuit and as the trend goes, I decided to go for an MBA and managed to crack IIM Bangalore. However, even as I lived a very predictable life, I had something in me, irking me constantly to go beyond and break the shackles of my conventionally successful life.
While I label engineering as my professional passion, my fervor for fitness has been consistent and is my life passion. It was my enthusiasm towards fitness and health that encouraged me to do my bit for the health and fitness segment and consequently the idea of Gympik was seeded in my head; it is my hobbyhorse.
Taking the Plunge
I have to admit that having a business idea and giving the idea a lucrative business structure are two different things and what is more daunting is its execution! There was a lot of struggle initially, especially when it came to finding like minded people, who would be ready to take the plunge along with me and dive in to the world of uncertainty, truly believe in the concept and contribute their time and effort to make it work. Apart from these road bumps, getting enough funding was another far fetched dream. It was a hard pressing situation and I had to put in all my saving to make it happen. Not only that, taking one step at a time, I started with a small setup and kept juggling between various office roles of my maiden venture. However, amid all hardships, I was lucky to have friends, who I knew from my previous jobs. They showed immense faith in me and joined hands with me to share some of the major responsibilities at Gympik. Scaling our business each day, we finally managed to raise seed funding from a group of angel investors. As we moved ahead with time, our hard work paid off as our destiny also favoured us. Today Gympik has its presence in 20 major cities of the country with more than 12000 fitness & wellness centers and 9000 personal trainers listed from all over India. We get more than 3500 unique visitors on this platform every day and the conversion rate has become much higher than before.
Through all thick and thins, my family has been my strongest support. They stood by me in my decision to quit my well established job and start afresh. I am grateful to each and every member of my family; my wife is the one who never let me fall flat on my face in the time of crisis. Even my parents and in-laws took turns to help us out. I always believed that if someone is doing something great, the results will follow. At this juncture, when fitness centre aggregators were struggling to raise funding, Gympik again caught RoundGlass Partner’s attention and from then there was no looking back.
Gympik – getting into shape
The conceptualization of Gympik was not just aimed at aggregating fitness centers, but was also aimed at solving a matter that is very crucial to India at present, which is poor health. Being a fitness fanatic I realized that people mostly are confused when it comes to take the right decision, be it taking personal training services, nutrition & diet counseling or even choosing the right fitness center. In India, where most people suffer from diseases like obesity, diabetes, hypertension and high blood pressure, we, at Gympik, are striving to make health reachable and accessible to each and every part of the country so that India can be free from these diseases.
Gympik came into being with an objective in mind. It is not unknown all that the health fitness industry is highly unstructured and unorganized. Factoring in all the shortcomings existing in the industry that can aid in comprehensively serving all fitness lovers, Gympik came in and stole the show. It hit the bull’s eye with its features that saves users the struggle of getting proper information related to fitness centers, compare services offered by various Gyms and choose according their personal needs, check for authenticity and make the choice without having to step out of the comfort of their house. Furthermore, adding the ease of our users and making fitness even more accessible to them, we recently also introduced personal training services in Bangalore. As we continue growing, we are also looking at expanding this feature geographically and launch the service in three more cities by the first quarter of 2017.
The journey at Gympik till date has been a roller coaster ride and we hope to continue the ride and keep moving forward. Thus, winding up my story in a positive and optimistic note, we at Gympik are expecting the year 2017 to be challenging year for us. We are exploring various other verticals and are planning to soon launch a couple of more programs by next year.
