How is Bollywood and celebrity ventures taking Indian fitness industry to a new level

Wellness industry in India is transforming into a huge platform that offers a powerful potential to a business to grow. Let us take a look at the annual figures of the industry. A study published in the year 2013 done by FICCI and PwC, showed that the wellness industry costs INR 70,000 Crore in 2012 and grew to touch the level of INR 100,000 Crore in the year 2015. The numbers are enough to show that the CAGR of the industry is around 15-17%. The wellness industry offers a huge potential for growth in the aspects like fitness, beauty, healthcare, etc.

Tapping into this potential, our Bollywood divas and other celebrities are not behind the competition. Many of them have invested their hard-earned money in the fitness industry in various possible ways.

Gul Panag is known for her acting skills and goddess-like beauty. She currently introduced herself in the Indian fitness industry. She jointly invested in the formation of MobieFit with Prototyze. This particular app focuses primarily on fitness and measuring vital statistics. It uses GPS to measure distance and other sensors for measuring exercise-related statistics. She is the co-founder of this app and has also introduced her own online fitness platform named FirstRun. This one has a voice-guided system for jogging, walking and running. In fact, she also depicted that the app will introduce a music layer and running programs for longer distance.

Madhuri Dixit Nene, on the other hand, took her capability of dancing to a new level by introducing a new dance academy online. She along with her husband took the initiative to a global level by making a training application named Dance with Madhuri. It has an excellent learning platform for the enthusiasts to get an idea about various types of dances online.

This app also teaches the fitness enthusiasts to stay healthy and fit via practicing dance moves. She wanted to take this approach to all the enthusiasts in the world. The version 2.0 of this app focuses on diversifying the service. She said “We are actually looking at capitalizing and scaling this business. That’s why we have built up the new version and believe that we can take it to the whole planet. Our first source of finance was Angel funding and now we are moving to VCs and PEs.” The content of the app is managed by RnM Moving Pictures. The diversified app will have various types of dance genres and platforms to meet the necessities of a huge audience.

Sushmita Sen, as we all know her as Miss Universe, has launched an absolutely new concept in the form of Aerial Silk. It is a particular practice where you train your mind. She believes that once the mind is trained, the body follows automatically. She has also introduced a fitness platform with the name ‘Inhale’ to support her new venture. She said to the media that this approach does not use any kind of instrument. She has incorporated 11 teachers to teach 12 students in every batch. The training includes practices which use its own body weight. The practices will offer exercises with a fusion of aerial dancing, Kalaripayattu, ballet, etc.

Rahul Dev is considered as the chisel-shaped villain in the Bollywood industry. He is a fitness buff too. Currently, he introduced a gym named ‘Breathe’ that offers classes for kick-boxing, Zumba, yoga and other specific physical training practices.

During the launch, Rahul said, "Breathe is not just a gym where you can work out and build muscles, but it’s a place where you can build your overall fitness and incorporate it into your lifestyle.” The gym chain was introduced by Rahul with the aid of Indian supermodel Milind Soman.

In the same context, Sunil Shetty has also owned stakes in few leading gym brands spread all over the country. He has started doing immense promotions in the cities like Nagpur and Pune to push the business for the gym brands.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Virat Kohli have invested in opening a huge chain of gyms across the country. Virat owns Chisel, a fitness platform whereas Dhoni owns SportsFit. Virat invested INR 90 Crore and Dhoni invested around INR 2000 Crore and aims to open 200 fitness centers in the country.

Eyeing the potential of the fitness industry, the actions from the Bollywood divas and sports celebrities have taken it to a new level.