Why Cult.fit spent ₹700 Cr to acquire 20+ companies? 🏋️♀️
The unknown secret of India's "first-ever" fitness unicorn.
Cult has acquired 20+ companies so far. In 2021, it acquired 7 startups in a single year. Why so aggressive and what’s working - let’s dig in.
How did it all start?
In 2016, “Cult” itself was acquired by “CureFit” & merged to become Cult.Fit.
CureFit was started by e-commerce hotshots — Mukesh Bansal, the founder of Myntra, and Ankit Nagori — CBO of Flipkart (back then). A time when the Indian fitness space was cluttered with 120+ fitness startups where none could do cross ₹10-20 Crores. Big boys Talwalkers, Anytime Fitness, & Golds were ruling it.
How did “acquisitions” help? 🙇🏻♂️
Distribution max 🏢
They wanted Cult centers to be not more than 20 minutes away from their ICPs. That’s why many initial acquisitions were fitness centers like 1000 Yoga, Tribe Fitness, Fitness First, Fitternity, Fitso, and even the mighty “Golds Gym”. With this, they got the insane scale of 160 Cult Fit centers, 140 Golds Gyms, and 40 Fitness Centres — spread across 32+ cities. The acquisition of big boys like Golds also saved them from potential future competition.
Fun Fact: Cult only owns ~35% of all centers rest are either a part of a franchise or marketplace model. So, even if they don’t own a fitness center, that center is still associated with Cult — bang-on move!
One-stop solution ⚔️
See, Cult’s aim is to be a “fitness platform” company and not a “fitness chain”. They are thinking beyond physical centers. This is where they are playing a game that was never played by anyone before. The goal is to become a one-stop solution for everything fitness. Here are vertical-wise acquisitions 👇
→ Cult.Sport (equipment): Urban Terrain, Tread, RPM Fitness, Fitkit, & Onefitplus.
→ Eat.Fit (food): Cake Zone, Paratha Box, Ammi’s Biryani, Masala Box & more.
→ Mind.Fit (mental health): Seraniti & Sugar.Fit.
Tech-supremacy 📱
Cult wanted to the the best fitness platform that has the biggest fitness community. But how do you do that? Yes, with the best tech. But, they didn’t want to spend time on the 0 to 1 journey of building everything themselves. That would’ve been slow and of course, could’ve led to missing the “fitness wave”.
That’s why acquisitions of companies like Onyx were a great move. Acquiring companies isn’t only about acquiring market share or distribution, it’s also about acquiring talent. And their app speaks for itself — even tried launching in the US back in 2020.
But, see, this is a superrare story because Cult raised ₹100 crores (~$15M) from Kalaari Capital, Accel Partners, and IDG Ventures even before they had launched the product in the market — something only Mukesh could’ve done.
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