The Gurugram based sports startup, Fitso, has raised $1.5 million in a pre-series A funding from a group of investors that include SRI Capital, Sprout Capital, IPV Capital, Pankaj Chaddah (Co-founder, Zomato), Ashish Gupta (Co-founder, Helion Venture Partners). The company will invest these funds in expansion, hiring good talent, and developing technology to boost its operations.
Fitso is India’s leading full-stack sports facilities provider which aims at bringing health and happiness in the life of people through sports. It was founded in 2015 by Saurabh Aggarwal, an ex-Flipkart employee, and IIT Delhi graduate. According to reports, Fitso is supporting Honorable Prime Minister- Shri Narendra Modi’s Fit India movement and is encouraging people to make the best use of technology to stay fit and healthy. Fitso’s chief product SEALs offers training and access to all-weather swimming pools in 7 regions namely- Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Delhi, Ghaziabad, GreaterNoida and Hyderabad. The startup also provides various programs for sports like Badminton and tennis. Lately, it has been devising to launch an All-In-One pass that would help its subscribers to have access to all of its sports facilities.
“We are making fitness accessible and affordable using technology for people who want to play sports to get fit, by eliminating the need for a gym membership or expensive equipment,” said Naman Sharma, Co-founder Fitso.
Fitness market in India & Fitso’s take on it
Sports has hugely been under-served in India. The crowd want to play but is not able to due to lack of expert coaches and proper sports arena. Fitso serves the public by solving all these issues by taking over and standardizing the facilities, implementing the best practices in facility management, and provide highly trained coaches for great user satisfaction. Fitso started with swimming and now has 20,000+ happy subscribers in Delhi NCR.
According to a report by Redseer, the overall fitness industry is estimated to be $12 billion in 2018. This is expected to grow at 18% CAGR to $32 billion by the year 2022. Recreational sports are estimated to contribute $20 billion to the industry. The growth will be driven by a rise in the number of Health Conscious Individuals estimated to at 90 million in 2018 & is projected to increase to 130 million by 2022.
The investors also commented on the great initiative taken by Fitso to make India fit.
Shweta Singh, Principal at SRI Capital, stated “There is a gap in demand for sports facilities among people of all age groups and supply of good quality facilities. There is a latent demand for a service like Fitso, which takes the hassle away from engaging in sports. Fitso is making sports accessible to all.”
Pankaj Chaddha, Founder of Zomato, added, “India as a nation increasingly becoming more health and fitness conscious. We need startups like Fitso to make sports more accessible to people.”
