Cult.fit’s Integrated Fitness and Wellness Business Model

Industry & Competitive Context

India’s organised fitness industry has historically operated through gyms, fitness studios, yoga centres and other specialised services, with consumers often purchasing individual services for individual needs. Cure.fit entered this market in 2016 with a broader proposition that connected physical fitness with other dimensions of personal wellbeing.

The company developed a portfolio that included cult.fit for physical fitness, eat.fit for healthy food, mind.fit for mental wellbeing and care.fit for healthcare and diagnostics. Tata Digital described Cure.fit in 2021 as a company offering digital and offline experiences across the fitness and wellness ecosystem, including fitness and yoga, mental wellbeing, healthy meals, consultations, diagnostics and personal training.

This approach positioned Cure.fit differently from a conventional gym chain. Instead of treating fitness as a single-location service, the company built a technology-enabled ecosystem around multiple health and wellness needs. An earlier company explanation described its objective as bringing different fitness services together through a common platform, while its 2021 rebranding subsequently consolidated the consumer-facing fitness proposition under the cult.fit name.

The competitive significance of this model was its attempt to combine physical infrastructure with digital access. The company operated fitness centres while also developing app-based workouts, memberships and other wellness services. This created a model in which the consumer relationship was not restricted to a gym visit.

Brand Situation Prior to Campaign

The business began with the Cult fitness concept in Bengaluru in 2016 and expanded through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions. The company later expanded into other fitness and wellness categories, including mind.fit and eat.fit, while also acquiring fitness businesses to increase its physical footprint. The company itself documented the acquisition of Fitternity and the expansion of its fitness-centre network as part of its development before the 2021 rebranding.

A significant characteristic of the early model was its emphasis on making fitness more structured and experience-led. Cult centres offered trainer-led group workouts across formats such as yoga, boxing, strength training and HRX. The company subsequently expanded its offering to include gym-based workouts and personal training.

The COVID-19 pandemic created an important test for this model because physical fitness centres were temporarily disrupted. Cult.fit responded by expanding its digital fitness proposition through cult.live. The company explained that its digital fitness content had existed before the pandemic, but the lockdown accelerated the development of live, trainer-led online classes. The platform was designed to reproduce elements of the Cult experience digitally, including scheduled classes and trainer-led participation.

This development was strategically important because it demonstrated that the brand's consumer proposition could extend beyond its physical centres.

Strategic Objective

The central strategic objective of Cure.fit was to build a broader health and wellness ecosystem rather than operate simply as a chain of fitness centres.

The company's 2021 rebranding made this direction explicit. Cure.fit announced that its fitness offering would operate under the cult.fit identity, while wellness offerings such as the eat.fit marketplace, therapy and teleconsultations would also sit within the wider cult.fit brand architecture. Its cultpass membership was positioned as a unified access mechanism for the company's fitness services.

The strategic logic was therefore based on integration. Fitness was used as the core consumer proposition, while digital products, physical centres, memberships, nutrition, mental wellbeing and healthcare services expanded the relationship beyond conventional gym usage.

Tata Digital's investment announcement in June 2021 provides external confirmation of this positioning. Tata Digital stated that Cure.fit had developed an ecosystem around fitness and wellness and that its comprehensive solution and technology platform were important elements of its proposition. Tata Digital announced an investment of up to US$75 million in Cure.fit, subject to due diligence and approvals.

Campaign Architecture & Execution

Although cult.fit is not best understood through a single advertising campaign, its business model can be analysed as an integrated architecture built around four connected elements: physical fitness infrastructure, digital fitness access, membership aggregation and adjacent wellness services.

The physical layer consisted of cult centres and gyms. Cult centres focused on trainer-led group classes, while the company's gym proposition added machine-based workouts and personal training. This broadened the service from a specialised group-workout concept to a more comprehensive fitness offering.

The digital layer allowed consumers to access workouts without being physically present at a centre. The company developed live and on-demand fitness content through its digital platform. Its current consumer offering includes at-home workouts alongside access to physical centres and gyms.

The membership layer was represented by cultpass. The company described cultpass as a universal membership covering its fitness services, with different access levels. Current cultpass offerings include combinations of group classes, gyms and at-home workouts, demonstrating how the membership model connects physical and digital fitness experiences.

The fourth layer involved adjacent wellness and lifestyle categories. Cure.fit's earlier portfolio included healthy meals, mental wellbeing and healthcare services, while cult.fit's current platform describes its wider proposition as covering fitness, healthy food, mental fitness and medical and lifestyle care.

The company also expanded its physical network through partnerships and franchising. In 2023, cult.fit announced 100 franchise sign-ups across India. The franchise format combined machine-based workouts and group classes under one roof, while Cure.fit had also expanded its franchise portfolio to include Fitness First and Gold's Gym outlets in India.

This architecture allowed cult.fit to move beyond the conventional gym membership model. The business could combine company-operated centres, partner gyms, digital workouts, memberships, franchise locations and fitness products within a broader consumer ecosystem.

Positioning & Consumer Insight

The strategic positioning of cult.fit was based on treating fitness as an ongoing lifestyle rather than a periodic gym transaction.

The company's own communication repeatedly emphasised convenience, variety and accessibility. Its at-home proposition was developed around the recognition that consumers could face practical barriers to visiting a physical fitness centre. The digital model therefore provided an alternative route to participate in the same broader fitness ecosystem.

Community was another important part of the positioning. Cult's original proposition centred on trainer-led group workouts rather than simply providing access to gym equipment. The company argued that the group environment created a distinctive experience, while its digital platform attempted to preserve elements of collective participation through live classes.

The resulting positioning was broader than “gym access.” Cult.fit offered multiple ways of exercising, including group classes, gyms and at-home workouts. Its current platform also offers access to different gym formats through cultpass, including cult centres, ELITE gyms and PRO gyms.

From an MBA strategy perspective, the important insight is that cult.fit attempted to solve several friction points within the fitness journey simultaneously: location dependence, limited workout formats, lack of flexibility and the separation between offline and online fitness.

Media & Channel Strategy

The verified evidence indicates that cult.fit's channel strategy was inherently omnichannel rather than dependent on one media platform.

The company's app and website functioned as important transaction and engagement channels. Customers could discover fitness centres, book classes, access digital workouts and manage memberships through the digital platform.

Physical centres remained central to the brand experience. The company used its network of cult centres and gyms to deliver trainer-led and equipment-based fitness experiences, while digital workouts extended the proposition beyond those physical locations.

During the pandemic, digital channels became particularly important. Cult.fit's own account of cult.live describes how the company moved trainer-led content online and expanded its digital infrastructure, including web access and Chromecast support.

The company also developed corporate and franchise channels. Its current business platform offers corporate wellness programmes, cultpass corporate memberships and franchise opportunities, creating channels beyond direct consumer subscriptions.

No verified public information is available that would support attributing specific customer-acquisition, conversion or retention metrics to individual media channels. Such metrics are therefore excluded from this case.

Business & Brand Outcomes

The business model produced measurable expansion in the company's physical and digital fitness footprint.

In 2023, cult.fit announced that its franchise business had reached 100 sign-ups. The company stated that its franchise operations had been serving Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities since their launch in 2020.

The company's fitness network has subsequently expanded substantially. Cult.fit's current franchise website states that the brand has more than 700 gyms across more than 60 cities. Because this is a current company-reported figure rather than an independently audited industry statistic, it should be interpreted as the company's stated network size.

The financial performance of the parent company also provides a documented business outcome. Economic Times reported that Curefit Healthcare's operating revenue increased from ₹927 crore in FY24 to ₹1,216 crore in FY25, representing a 31 percent increase. The report attributed the growth to higher same-store sales, expansion of the service business, which includes group classes, personal training and gyms, and growth in the product business, including fitness equipment and accessories.

The same report stated that EBITDA loss narrowed from ₹209 crore in FY24 to ₹36 crore in FY25, with the EBITDA margin improving from negative 22 percent to negative 3 percent.

These results do not establish that the integrated wellness model alone caused the financial improvement. They do, however, document that the parent company's revenue expanded while its EBITDA loss narrowed during FY25.

The strategic importance of the model was also recognised by Tata Digital. Its 2021 announcement characterised Cure.fit as a leading fitness player with a strong fitness and wellness ecosystem and identified its technology platform and comprehensive offering as strategic assets.

Strategic Implications

The cult.fit case demonstrates how a service business can attempt to move from a single-category proposition toward an integrated ecosystem.

The first implication is that integration can increase the number of consumer use cases around a core brand. Cult.fit began with fitness and subsequently connected group workouts, gyms, at-home workouts, sports, equipment and other wellness categories. The model therefore expanded the meaning of the brand beyond a physical fitness centre.

The second implication is the strategic value of combining digital and physical assets. Digital fitness can provide convenience and geographic flexibility, while physical centres provide equipment, trainers and group experiences. Cult.fit's model deliberately connected the two rather than treating them as independent businesses. Its cultpass structure is a direct manifestation of this integration.

The third implication concerns scalability. Physical fitness businesses are naturally constrained by locations and capacity. Cult.fit's use of digital workouts, partner gyms and franchising created additional mechanisms for extending the proposition. The company's franchise expansion illustrates how the brand has used partnerships to increase physical reach without relying exclusively on company-operated locations.

The fourth implication is strategic focus. Cure.fit originally pursued a broad health ecosystem encompassing fitness, food, mental wellbeing and healthcare. The company later increasingly emphasised cult.fit as the consumer-facing fitness brand. This evolution demonstrates that ecosystem strategy does not necessarily mean operating every category with equal strategic weight. The brand architecture can change as the company learns where its strongest market position lies.

Finally, the case highlights the distinction between ecosystem breadth and business performance. A broad portfolio can create multiple consumer touchpoints, but financial performance must still be evaluated through documented revenue, profitability and operating results. The FY25 results provide evidence of substantial revenue growth and reduced EBITDA losses, but they do not establish that every component of the wellness ecosystem contributed equally to those outcomes.

For MBA students, cult.fit is therefore a useful case in platform strategy, service innovation, omnichannel business models, membership economics, physical-digital integration and the strategic evolution of a consumer health brand.

MBA Discussion Questions

1. How did cult.fit's combination of physical centres, digital workouts and membership access differentiate its business model from a conventional gym chain?

2. What strategic advantages and challenges arise when a fitness company expands into adjacent categories such as nutrition, mental wellbeing and healthcare?

3. How does cultpass change the value proposition of a traditional fitness membership?

4. What role did franchising and partnerships play in cult.fit's physical expansion, and what strategic trade-offs can arise from such an expansion model?

5. Based on the documented FY24 and FY25 results, what conclusions can reasonably be drawn about cult.fit's business performance, and what conclusions cannot be established from the available public information?