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— M. Karunakaran

A view of a FitnessOne outlet in Chennai (file picture).

R. Ravikumar

Chennai, Sept. 24 Gym and fitness training to equipment retailing company, FitnessOne, is now working on establishing large-format sports centres, where the company will extend functional fitness training to sportspersons apart from fitness freaks.

A large South India-based business house has expressed interest in partnering the company in this venture. “As the talks are just set to roll, it’s little too early to say anything about that. However, once it comes through, we will launch sport centres that will house all facilities in minimum of 20,000-sq.ft. area in all major cities in the country,” said Mr Vivek Anand, Managing Director of FitnessOne.

Besides, it is also planning to take its total number of fitness centres to 100 across cities by 2010. FitnessOne has a national footprint. It recently opened two more outlets in Bangalore. With this, it currently has 50 outlets (including franchisee centres) under three formats – FitnessOne (full-fledged, unisex, large format gym), FitnessExpress (satellite model) and Pink (women-only model).

However, according to Mr Anand, the key growth driver for the company is the FPO (fitness process outsourcing) segment. Last year, FitnessOne started offering corporate houses services to set up and run fitness centres inside their campuses for their employees. “This has really picked up. Today, we have established 35 such centres in companies including majors such as Ashok Leyland, Saint Gobain, Cognizant, ABB, ABN Amro, Citibank, Motorola and Nokia,” he said.

To enable even relatively smaller companies to have such a facility in their campuses, FitnessOne has introduced the ‘leasing model’, where a company could have a fitness centre established and pay in instalments.

“This has actually propelled our growth in the segment, and we hope to establish at least another 50 such facilities,” he said.

On the equipment retailing front, FitnessOne, apart from selling equipment from global brands, has introduced its in-house brand ‘Propel’. The manufacture of Propel fitness equipment is outsourced to Taiwan and Korea.

According to Mr Anand, the company is currently valued at Rs 100 crore. The Mauritius-based India Equity Growth Fund, part of Reliance Asset Management Co, Mauritius, has taken 4.5 per cent stake in the company. Asked whether the company will tap the capital market in the near future, he replied in the negative saying, “At least not in the next two years.”

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