India's Fitness Boom: Nikhil Kamath Sees Rs 8 Lakh Crore Business Goldmine

'Prevention is better than cure' — we have all grown up listening to this mantra, especially when it comes to health. But now, preventive healthcare also has a massive opportunity to make money with the projected size of the market to hit $197 billion, which is roughly, Rs 8 lakh crore by 2025.

Nikhil Kamath, Co-founder at Zerodha, shared a post on X, saying, "everything health-related in the last decade felt like it was too early. This seems to be changing now, with health and longevity becoming mainstream in urban India". He further added that the timing at present might be just right for entrepreneurs to build something in health.

He backed his view with some note-worthy statistics too.

According to Kamath's post, India's preventive healthcare market has doubled in size in the past four years, with 'wellness and fitness' alone contributing $98 billion and occupying a major 51% of the total market size.

Nikhil Kamath's post stated, that live fitness content consumption has increased as much as 1300% since Covid times, which, completely transformed the world's view on health. And it is this growing consciousness that India is going to benefit from.

The post further substantiated the potential growth of the fitness industry by comparing the under penetration of wearables and gym goers in India with the world.

As per figures of 2021, showed in Kamath's post, 114 units of fitness wearables is sold per 10,000 people in India as compared to the global average of 645. This makes the fitness wearable sale 82% lesser in India against the global number.

What could bridge the gap? The post claims that more women participation in gyms which is about 45% at present could most likely uplift the fitness wave in our country.

As per the slides shared by Kamath, Indians on an average spend anywhere between Rs 4,000 to Rs 10,000 annually on preventive healthcare. Preventive healthcare includes exercise, healthy nutrition, health insurance, early diagnosis and heath tracking.

But this expenditure is extremely slanted towards the wealthy as only 35% of the richest Indians contribute to a gigantic 98% of the total preventive healthcare spends.

Another interesting insight from the post revealed that India lags far behind in gym subscriptions, nibbling only a tiny 0.2% of the world's total tally. In fact, the U.S, U.K, and France boast the highest gym subscriptions at 21.2%, 15.6% and 9.2%, respectively.

Moreover, not only do we have the least gym subscriptions in the world but over 50% gym members aren't regular. The data also highlighted that India currently has 96,278 gyms in total.

And this data is reflective of India's fitness lag, underscoring the gym culture to still be in its nascent stages.

'New year resolution drive 12.5% of gym memberships but 80% of them don't even last five months', the post noted.

No one said adopting fitness could be an easy endeavor but could procrastination be the only reason we end up wasting our gym subscriptions?

The slides pointed at some other important deterrents that are possibly coming in the way. For instance, it said, that 1 in 3 Indians find gyms overcrowded and 44% people prefer home workouts due to poor maintenance, parking issues and less group sessions.

In fact, workout bonding has been observed to be an essential motivation factor. Running, riding or hiking in groups of 10 increases distance covered by 40% as compared to solo workouts, as per the post.

Besides, walking is the most preferred physical activity with an average Indian walking 6,499 steps daily, marking a 12% compound annual growth rate.

Overall, Kamath's post underscores "consistency" as a key challenge in fostering India's fitness journey. It calls for the need of a "cultural shift" in fitness before the cost of inaction becomes irreversible.