News

Fitternity, India’s leading fitness discovery and booking platform, has raised ~USD 4 million from Sixth Sense Ventures, India’s first consumer centric domestic venture fund. Using technology and data insights of over 10 million customers and over 10,000 Fitness centres, Fitternity is controlling the P&L of Gyms/Fitness studios to exponentially grow their revenues in an asset-light fashion. Disrupting the fitness industry to cater to the mindful, health-conscious evolution of consumers, Fitternity is perfectly aligned with Sixth Sense’s investment philosophy of Investing in the Consumer of Tomorrow…today!!

Fitternity has pioneered the Pay-Per-Session model, membership portability and dynamic pricing – addressing the fear of wasted long-term memberships and need for variety. This will not just drive penetration, but also increase yield for fitness centres. Fitternity is in sweet-spot to pre-empt fitness consumption across demographics and geographies. Furthermore, Fitternity is revolutionising health insurance and employee wellness incorporates. They have already partnered with top insurance companies to offer fitness linked insurance premiums, and are replacing outdated gym reimbursements with portable and flexible Fitternity Sessions for leading corporates.

India has the second largest occurrence of diabetes, has the third largest population of obese women and 10 million heart patients are below 40 years. Preventive healthcare is the need of the hour and fitness is the primary driver. The Indian Fitness market is at an inflection point, primed to scale up to USD 7 billion by 2022 and we believe Fitternity is at the driver’s seat! Currently, Fitness in India is a USD 3 billion market growing at 18%, with only 4% of the market comprising of organised gym chains, 96% is long-tail. New fitness regimes such as, cross-functional training, Zumba, HIIT, Pilates, kickboxing, etc have very high awareness amongst urban millennials. This is driving demand for mixed fitness routines and variety amongst Indian consumers.

Fitternity was founded in 2013 by first-generation entrepreneurs, Neha Motwani, a management graduate and consultant and Jayam Vora, an engineer and Healthcare specialist.

“We are really excited to partner with Sixth Sense. Nikhil Vora and team’s expertise and network across the consumer space will enhance and accelerate our growth and ability to achieve our larger vision. Our business models are seeing great traction on both sides of demand and supply and we aim to scale across three major focus areas – adding offerings in ancillary categories across sports & preventive healthcare, scaling up our supply base in top 20 cities, and managing inventory at scale.” – stated Neha, founder and CEO, Fitternity.

“We have a deep understanding of the pain points of consumers in their fitness journey and through innovative offerings across a strong network of gyms / studios we aim to provide an optimal solution to our customers across their wellness lifecycle. With robust unit economics in place we are very confident to grow our revenue 6X over the next 12 months. We have benefited immensely with Nikhil’s inputs over the last few years. Having the opportunity to scale up Fitternity alongside the Sixth Sense team is truly exciting”, adds Jayam, cofounder and COO.

Nikhil Vora, founder and CEO of Sixth Sense, says, “Fitternity is a great fit for Sixth Sense as its business model has perfectly evolved to be relevant to the changing behaviours of the Indian consumer. Their innovative offerings make the platform extremely sticky. I’ve known Neha and Jayam for a while and is heartening to see them evolve over the years and build a strong team as they become leaders in the fitness space. Our dream is to see Fitternity evolve to become the Google for discovering fitness, the BookMyShow for buying fitness and akin to a Zomato-Swiggy for consuming fitness.”

Sixth Sense Ventures is India’s first domestic, consumer-focused venture fund that is Investing in the consumer of tomorrow…Today! Sixth Sense’s first fund, Sixth Sense India Opportunities I (SSIO-I) closed in 2016 and the entire corpus of Rs.118Cr. was invested in 10 companies across the consumer value chain. SSIO-I is already at 2.3X (44% IRR), and with 4 exits already completed Sixth Sense has achieved a rare feat of possibly being the first VC fund in India to return capital back to its investors within 3 years!

Their second fund, SSIO-II, closed at Rs.515Cr., more than double our target corpus of Rs.250Cr. on the back of enthusiastic investor interest. They achieved this feat in a record 9 months, despite the volatility in the markets. Sixth Sense Ventures was awarded Fundraiser of the Year 2018 – Venture Capital at the Annual VCCircle Awards. With 9 investments already done, Fitternity will be the tenth investment from SSIO-II. Sixth Sense’s other investments include, Eupheus Learning, JHS Brands, Soothe Healthcare, SaffronStays, Hindustan Foods, Fullife Healthcare, LEAP India, AVG Logistics and MyHealthcare.