What Nikhil Kakkar teaches about privacy-first marketing

The millennials in the current era are looking at quick result programs. They are not having too much of time to spend inside the gym. So they are looking at basically spending half an hour to 45 minutes inside the gym and achieve their goals. Hi Nikhil, there is a fitness revolution that is being led by millennials. How is the industry evolving to cater to this demand? Yes, there is a revolution going on actually and of course it is led by the millennials. And the millennials in the current era are looking at quick result programs.

They are not having too much of time to spend inside the gym. So they are looking at basically spending half an hour to 45 minutes inside the gym and achieve their goals. Hence basically we have curated a lot of programs which basically delivers faster results like functional training or HIIT internal training actually which has been introduced. And we have curated these programs inside our gym at no cost. So hence we are basically also basically evolving and innovating new forms of exercises,

new programs actually to meet the requirements of the millennials actually. The Fit India movement being led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has clearly put fitness on the top of mind for many. How do you think the conversation is evolving? No, I am seeing a lot of traction happening on the ground actually. Right now like we are in 95 cities actually. So hitting 95 cities and lot of cities we have added in past 3-4 years is basically tier 3, tier 4 towns actually. We have reached cities actually which are unheard of actually.

And we never thought that we will reach basically those cities when we basically started our franchise journey actually. So now the consumer as well as the population both are aware actually. And I see lot of potential because if we look at penetration level, people going to the gym or people doing fitness, we still have a long way to go actually. Like in India not even a single percent of population goes to the gym. Where in US 12% to 14% of the population goes to the gym.

So hence I feel there is a lot of scope actually and Prime Minister himself basically leading it from front because he himself has been considered as the fitness icon actually. Fitness and health is a space that is highly dependent on trust. How do you build that with consumers? When a consumer hits the gym, the first thing he looks at is the equipment. The equipment has to be basically standard equipment, has the best of the biomechanics actually. And second is a trainer.

Lot of trainers actually basically when they go to a gym basically are not certified. So when we started our journey 17 years back actually, the same challenge we used to have actually. And of lately, say close to 12 years back actually we started our own education institute to train trainers actually. So we run an academy called Gold Gym Fitness Institute actually which certifies the trainers actually. So we are basically achieving two goals actually from this.

One is basically we are providing a quality and a certified training experience to the consumer. We are also creating skills. We are basically training trainers and basically hiring them actually inside our gyms only. Women as a category have a unique wellness needs. How do you cater to this segment? We provide a safe environment actually to the female members actually. Second is the emotional and physical connect actually. So emotional like providing the needs in terms of nutrition and dietitian actually are part of the system actually.

And third is basically understanding the needs of the female actually their goals. These skill set or these skills these skill trainers basically assured what they want to achieve actually. They achieve their goals actually in the time. Demand is definitely on the rise. But do we also have an adequate supply of skilled professionals and how do you address this? Yeah we do like as I just mentioned actually GGFI we used to train typically thousand trainers actually three four years back actually.

Now understanding the way we are expanding and the way fitness is evolving across country. We have basically also parallel expanded our Gold Gym Fitness Institute actually across country. Right now we have started basically eight standalone centers actually across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore. Now we even getting into tier two towns cities like Surat, Kanpur, cities like Lucknow. So we are getting into those cities as basically an educating and training people.

We also basically have basically have 100 hours of basically practical training program for the trainers actually on the floor. So and typically we are going to train typically two thousand plus trainers in this year actually. So looking at the basically requirement what we are going to have and what the industry is going to have actually. So we are also working on those lines. The audience is far larger in tier two and three cities. Right. How are you reimagining your product and format to cater to these areas where price points may also differ?

So what happens is every market is a different market. We used to be in 45 to 50 cities actually for five years back. We have double the cities actually number of cities where we are present in past four to five years as I just mentioned. And what we have done is we have basically customized formats based on the needs and the demographics of the city. Because the price point and the affordability is also different actually. So I have for a metro I have a bigger product which is seven thousand to ten thousand square feet of box.

And looking at tier two towns cities like your Amravati, Jalgaon or Karnal or Ambala kind of cities actually which are tier two towns actually. We have a Gold Gym Express which is three and a half thousand to four thousand square feet actually of box actually. So the investments also goes on because we majorly operate on a franchise format. So the because and the business has to be sustainable and he has to make revenue out of it actually. So we have a Gold Gym Express catering to tier two and tier three towns.

And last year we have introduced another format because we are now getting basically inquiries and demand from tier four towns actually. So we have and this is a basically Indianized version of Gold Gym actually I can say. This is Gold Gym Active we have introduced last year. Two and a half thousand square feet of box and we have opened three boxes actually in recent times. In a city like Tejpur in northeast actually in a city like Hoshiarpur in Punjab. And we are looking at opening few more actually in years to come actually.