Omnichannel health and wellness platform Cure.fit has acquired gym aggregator Fitternity, in line with its plans to become the country’s largest gymming franchisee.
This acquisition will give Cure.fit a collective user base of 3 million, targeting 5,000 gyms across 20 cities.
Curefit recently launched Cult Pass, it's all access pass to co-branded gyms and Cult centres. Earlier TechCircle had reported about the company’s plans to have at least a 1,000 gyms under the pass scheme by 2022. The Fitternity acquisition will help further those plans.
Fitternity will continue to operate independently and the app will remain active.
GCA acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Fitternity in the transaction.
“Fitness in India is still in initial stages at sub 1% penetration. Over the next 10-20 years, this will increase to 15-20% like in the west. With increasing health awareness, demand is increasing, and we need to put up quality supply. With Fitternity on board, Cure.fit will improve existing offline gyms, bring them up to speed with better technology, and focus on empowering them to adjust to the post-Covid scenario amid changing consumer expectations,” Mukesh Bansal, co-founder, Cure.fit, said in a statement.
Cure.fit’s business head, Naresh Krishnaswamy, Curefit’s business head added, “Fitternity has done a great job in aggregating, enabling discovery and also helping create the right experiences for both partners and customers. This will help us give variety and choice to both B2C and B2B customers in their fitness pursuit”.
“The first 30 gyms on Cult pass have seen 2-3X increase in revenue. We are confident that top 1000 gyms on the combined platform will be deeply tech-enabled and will realise 50-100% more business from the existing infrastructure,” he said.
The consolidation move follows in the wake of gym businesses getting hit by the COVID-19 induced lockdown last year. Moreover, both Fitternity and Cure.fit have been trying to scale their digital training offerings while focusing on recovery of offline businesses.
Cure.fit was also in the news for laying off a significant number of employees across training and housekeeping staff.
“For Fitternity, this transaction enables a significant evolution of our user proposition, while driving growth for our partner network beyond just recovery to achieving the true potential of the fitness retail business in India. The integrated mix of technology, progressive business models and the neighbourhood gyms and fitness classes will be the secret sauce to empower a Fit India,” Jayam Vora, co-founder and COO of Fitternity, said in a statement.