Mumbai-based Fitternity raises $1M funding led by Exfinity VP

Mumbai-based fitness discovery and marketplace platform Fitternity Health E-solutions has raised pre-series A investment of USD 1M led by Bengaluru-based Exfinity Venture Partners, a fund formed by industry veterans like TV Mohandas Pai, Balakrishnan V, Girish Paranjpe and Deepak Ghaisas. The funds will be deployed primarily for product development, marketing and pan-India expansion.

Fitternity is catering to holistic preventive healthcare space covering EXERCISE (working out), EAT (eating right) and EXPLORE (mental wellbeing). The website and app is hyper-local search engine that provides detailed information including photos, videos, rate cards and user reviews on all fitness related services (in user's vicinity) like gyms, yoga, zumba, pilates, crossfit, marathon training, personal trainers, healthy tiffins and more. The startup is operating in 16 categories in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore and plans to launch in Delhi soon.

Neha Motwani, Founder and CEO of Fitternity says,

But we aren’t just an aggregator, we help customers find the best fitness options to suit their specific needs, book free trials (users can take unlimited trials before figuring the right option) and buy memberships at discounts.

Fitternity has an active user base of 50,000+ users and 17,000+ trials have been booked through the portal.

According to Balakrishnan V (Bala), Chairman, Exfinity Ventures, fitness and wellness industry is a 10,000 cr industry (FY 15 - FICCI - PWC report) and there has been a plethora of fitness services like yoga, zumba, spinning classes, kick boxing, aerobics etc. from multiple service providers. Shailesh Ghorpade, Managing Partner, Exfinity Technology Ventures says,

The fitness /wellness industry in India is highly unorganized marred with poor service levels, low renewal rates, lack of trained manpower and credible information etc. Fitternity's approach of combining content , e-commerce and hyperlocal service discovery is unique. Its approach is tightly coupled with the service providers efforts.

With the infusion of funds, Neha wants to take Fitternity to new markets and launch more categories relevant to fitness enthusiasts. The company will pursue an aggressive customer acquisition strategy along with focusing on building a robust product which enables customers to compare and directly book fitness memberships & classes across all metro cities in India.

The fitness and wellness industry is one among the many with investors' interest in recent past. Practo entered this segment with the acquisition of Fitho earliest this year. Bengaluru-based personal assistant coach Orobind raised angel funding within three months of its launch. After spinning-off Healthkart-Plus, the parent company is also all set to enter this segment. Other players include Fitness Papa, Gymer, Gympik among many more.

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