Ingredients for Success:
Be open – you never know what serendipity could lead to. Having grit is often emphasized as a pathway to success for founders. But serendipity is often overlooked. If it wasn’t for Sonal’s willingness to participate in Miss Asia Universe – a pageant contest – she may not have had the chance to embark on building Fittr.
Don’t always demarcate supply and demand when building a platform. Fittr’s catalyst for growth is its ability to interlink roles between coaches and clients. In 2020, the vast majority of coaches were former clients. People want to give back. Platforms frequently have a demand and supply side – with clear distinctions – but creating a bridge amongst them can be the key to unlocking high retention.
Keep the ‘right’ investors by your side. Product, distribution, team building. These are foundations for building a robust venture-backed firm. But having the right investors is critical. Build relationships and keep the investors that resonate with the values of the company you’re trying to build close. You never know when you need them.
Is being able to prioritize fitness in one’s life a luxury?
In India, where the vast majority of the population is seeking to fulfill their basic needs, thinking about leading a healthy lifestyle is often, an afterthought. Fittr, an end-to-end wellness platform, aims to flip this notion on its head. At no cost, users have access to a robust, supportive community, and access to workouts, recipes, and advice on how to lead a well-rounded life. At its helm, Sonal Singh, is empowered by Fittr’s proposition and its role in making its users live a happier and healthier life.
Go with Your Gut
Intuition is a wonderful thing. The world around us presents hard-lined data and forecasts to make you feel comfortable. We seek out validation and proof that we are making the right decisions. But, at times, overruling this certainty is an inexplicable aspect of our minds – intuition; that ‘gut’ feeling.
Sonal seemed to have been on the ‘right track’. Living in London, she was rising up in her management consulting role at Deloitte. Albeit professionally challenged, something felt amiss. “I was learning and enjoying my work in London, but somewhere deep inside, I knew it wasn’t for me.” Intuition overrode practicality, and Sonal felt the need to return to India. This deep-rooted desire to have an impact in the country stems from her experiences long before she moved to London. “While growing up in Canada to Indian parents, I wanted to learn about the ‘motherland’ and did an internship with the Aga Khan Foundation. At the Foundation – where I focused on initiatives around increasing healthcare access to women across rural India – my learnings were life-altering. I knew that at some point, I’d want to return to be able to add value.”
With these experiences in mind, Sonal packed her bags and made the trip to India. No job, no validation, no plan. Just, intuition.
The Beauty of Serendipity
Not all was lost with Sonal’s decision to leave London. Her broad-based consulting skill set could be translated and deployed across a wide set of situations. “I started working as a freelance consultant for a few clients and acquainted myself with working in India. Out of nowhere, I was approached by a friend to consider participating in Miss Asia Universe. I thought to myself: I do have some free time, and this is a perfect reason to get in shape. So, I decided to go ahead with it!”
Armed with a new experiment – a pageant contest – Sonal decided to sign up for SQUATS (which eventually evolved into Fittr) through the recommendation of a friend who had a good experience with them. “Luckily for me, I was coached directly by JC (nickname for Jitendra Chouksey, the founder of SQUATS). The pageant contest came around, and as luck may have it, I ended up winning the competition! After this, JC asked me to come to speak at SQUATS’ first-ever annual conference, and that’s really where things began coming together.”
After flying down to speak at the conference, Sonal was struck by the success stories and strength of the community. This is what pulled her right in.
“I was in complete awe. At this point, I sat down with JC and expressed my interest in getting involved. In no time, JC - who valued my unique experiences - asked me to join the founding team.”
Sharing Your Work
Fittr didn’t have the intentional start that most founders seek out. Jitendra Chouksey was working a full-time IT job, and using research, was able to transform his body for the better. He published his learnings in a free book called ‘Get Shredded’ and started answering questions on a WhatsApp group. His premise was simple: the market is over-crowded with myths on how to stay healthy. There are countless diets that float around the internet, yet, in the long run, clients revert to their normal, baseline behavior. Jitendra wanted to educate his audience; he wanted to inculcate an understanding that nutrition is simple, and that anyone can lead a healthy lifestyle.
As his audience grew, he noticed a shift in conversation in Fittr’s WhatsApp group. “Members began sharing ‘before and after’ progress on their fitness journeys. People were encouraging one another, sharing feedback, and answering questions. Soon, JC started a Facebook group, where content-sharing was more friendly and where he saw the community grow to over 1 million people,” says Sonal.
Armed with a growing community, a fitness product, and now with Sonal and other founding members Jyoti Dabas, Rohit Chattopadhyay & Bala Krishna Reddy on board, JC formalized Fittr. Their aim: to build the world’s largest online fitness and nutrition community.
Student Becomes the Master
As you might tell from my previous posts, it’s always interesting to learn about how an entrepreneur grows their platform business. Fittr is no exception. There’s a moment during a conversation where it strikes me where a business has its moat; a point of defensibility. For Fittr, this happens to be their control of the ‘supply’ on their platform.
I’ll start with an impressive stat: in 2020, 60% of the coaches on Fittr’s platform were previous users. There is evidently a culture of giving back. Sonal understands the importance of high-quality training and guidance, and wants to make sure that all users are receiving standardized, vetted advice. In order to accomplish this, JC & Jyoti set up an e-learning and training academy – the Institute of Nutrition and Fitness Sciences - for prospective coaches. It’s a rigorous program, where participants need to complete two exams and pass interviews conducted by experts. And of course, the coaches need to be physically fit. At the same time, the founders had the intent to build a platform that isn’t intimidating. “Your coach is not this big scary guy who has been working out for 50 years. Most of them have shared their journey on Fittr already. In fact, many of them are women that were previously not involved in the workforce. We create opportunities for those excluded from the traditional employment system.” The incentive to join doesn’t end at the supportive community – it’s the pay, too. Fittr’s 400+ coaches earn nearly $1800/month – 6 times the industry average in India.
The demand side of the platform, as you’d imagine, is driven mostly by word-of-mouth. Actually, scratch that. It’s purely word-of-mouth. “We spend zero on customer acquisition costs (CAC) today. Even though we recently began beefing up our marketing team, our growth thus far has been driven by users that have shared their journey with friends and family.” Naturally, this is impressive for any early-stage startup, and so I proceeded to ask Sonal more about how Fittr achieved this milestone. “We’ve been laser-focused on quality. Once we achieved product-market-fit, we learned early on the cost of getting distracted. We continued to direct our energy on what was working. Another thing is that we’re highly results focused. We don’t want to compromise on our net promoter score, which keeps us driven to consistently work on the user experience.” Similar to Abhay at Colearn, quantifying your ‘north star’ seems to keep founders grounded and focused.
The strength of the community – Fittr’s moat – is what keeps users in check. It’s what keeps the ‘machine’ running. Users have life-changing fitness experiences, give back in the form of becoming coaches, and the cycle repeats. They’ve built a robust, high-quality feedback loop. What more can a company ask for?
When the Price is Right
At this point, you may be asking yourself: what motivated 60% of users to become coaches on Fittr? After all, it’s a serious time commitment.
Outside of the results-driven ethos, it’s likely the pricing model. Fittr is essentially free, up until one chooses to engage a coach for a 1-on-1. Free recipes, free workouts, free access to members that keep you motivated. Sounds like a great deal, and that’s what pushes people to give back. The community feedback loop is not only built to convince users into becoming coaches; there is more incentive to ‘sell’ Fittr’s proposition to those close to you, engage with users on the platform more frequently, and actively moderate content to ensure there’s no body-shaming or abusive language being disseminated.
“Community building is an ongoing process. Ensuring quality as the platform scales is difficult, and it certainly requires work. We continue to do what we can to create a safe, healthy, and comfortable platform for our users.”
Do, Don’t Tell
For a company that is built on the foundation of promoting a healthy lifestyle, Fittr’s culture is unsurprisingly, focused on wellbeing. “I prefer to mentally ‘check out’ from work at the end of the day, and I encourage our employees to do so as well. It’s even more challenging in today’s work-from-home environment, but it’s paramount in building a culture of high productivity.”
Aside from well-being, Fittr’s culture is built on two core pillars: risk taking and accountability. “My philosophy is that we need to empower those around us to make decisions. It’s not a top-down company where the founders need to approve everything. Ultimately, we want people who work at Fittr to take ownership of specific verticals, take a step back to analyze situations, and be comfortable in making decisions. It all boils down to trusting the people you hire and supporting them to bring the best version of themselves to work every day.” Micromanaging is, in many ways, the enemy of empowerment.
Plenty of Fish in the Sea
Investors are consistently along for the ride with founders. It’s a coach-player relationship, where the investor is on the sidelines, urging and pushing founders to take their business to the next level. Where is the fun if the investor isn’t the right fit? Or worse – if the founder doesn’t respect their investor?
I was curious as to why Fittr needed to raise capital in the first place. “We’ve been fortunate to have healthy LTV/CAC levels since the get-go, but the founders and I realized we were looking for the right partners to help us grow and scale. We were looking for backers that would help us attain our mission quicker and ensure we hire and retain the best talent – fitness enthusiasts like Suniel Shetty and our marquee investors help us do that.”
Given the tight-knit relationship that investors have with founders, Sonal encourages entrepreneurs to choose carefully (as long as they have time on their side). Aside from deal terms, it’s critical for founders to pick partners that believe in the mission of the company.
“It’s tempting to say ‘yes’ when you get the first term sheet. But ask yourself: am I staying true to my core principles? Is this partner going to add value based on where we see the company going?”
A Healthier World
To an outsider, one would look at a business that specializes in online fitness, and think: of course, Fittr benefitted from COVID! Everybody was working out from home, right? That’s only partly true. “Initially, we were suffering – especially as it relates to our paid users. People who relied on going to a gym for their workouts were lost on how to use our product. Fortunately, with time, people’s behavior and comfort shifted as they realized that the pandemic wasn’t ending anytime soon. Our active users went up – but still, because of the hit people took to their income, our paid users didn’t grow as rapidly.”
As you could tell, Sonal’s down-to-earth nature is central to her success. As arduous a picture she paints about Fittr’s performance in recent months, the results tell otherwise. Fittr has helped transform the lives of over 150k people. From a financial standpoint, the company has an annualized run-rate of $12 million and has been profitable – with a current margin of +10% - since inception. With 2 million community members and the momentum of 100k being added every month, Fittr is on track to achieve its momentous goal: to make fitness less of a luxury, while contributing to the health of Indians - and soon, the world.