Up and running on your feet

Q&A: Vikram Aditya Bhatia, MD, Fitness First Gyms

Fitness First finally enters India. Has it been a long journey?
The plans to enter India have been in the making for almost 10 years. I used to run my own gym in south Delhi but I wanted something bigger and better. I tried to get private equity funding but no one was willing.

When I got in touch with Fitness First, they were interested and ever since we've been working to get here. I have been with them for the last eight years as an employee and shareholder, and opened their gyms in other countries too, including Dubai.

The gym has taken huge spaces in prime locations in Delhi and Mumbai. How do you intend to sustain and make profits?
That is right. We are investing £1 million in each club. In fact, the Connaught Place club, which, at 2,700 sq ft will probably be the largest in India, will see an investment of £1.5 million, and this does not include rentals. Our business is volumes driven.

We are charging each member under Rs 3,000 a month. Our prices make us affordable for a larger number of people. In the first month alone, we have 1,200 members in Gurgaon and over 1,000 in Mumbai. I am targeting at least 4,000 members in each gym and about 6,000 in CP.

Our rentals will come from the money we make and not from internal accruals. Speaking of profits, as with Fitness First gyms across countries, we will break even in the fourth or fifth month of operation. We plan to have 100-150 clubs in India.

Only individual memberships, or will you rope in corporate members too?
First, we will have only monthly memberships on a renewable basis. We are not offering quarter or annual memberships because we don't need large sums of money from our members to invest. Second, there will be no couple, family or corporate membership packages. At Fitness First, we treat each member as an individual.

How easy or difficult was the task of collecting your management team and your fitness experts?
Our team consists of some very experienced managers. We have an IIM passout, our HR head is from PepsiCo and the finance head is from Pizza Hut. Our fitness experts have been handpicked by each fitness head and trained for about two months before they hit the gym.