Once a small WhatsApp group where Jitendra Chouksey helped his friends get and stay fit, Squats is now home to one of the largest fitness communities in the world. The Pune-based start-up has turned into a profitable venture churning out crores in revenue, and is part of US-based accelerator Y Combinator’s 2020 batch.
Already one of the more promising lights in India’s start-up ecosystem, its entry into Y Combinator could well give the firm a boost, the likes of which had propelled other Y Combinator alumni like AirBnB, Dropbox and Stripe.
“It began as a small group I counselled on how to keep fit and then it turned into something much bigger. We launched a Facebook community later and uploaded a booklet with a lot of fitness information I wrote called Get Shredded, but people wanted a more hands-on approach and counselling,” said Chouksey, founder of Squats.
The limitations of a forum-like approach in hands-on training and counselling finally saw Chouksey launching Squats as a curated nutrition and fitness counselling marketplace, and then follow it up with an app called FITTR, that lets users get customised training schedules and advice.
The start-up was bootstrapped, with a bunch of early members from the Whatsapp group and friends of Chouksey putting together a few thousand rupees each for a grand total of Rs 90,000 to get it off the ground. “The whole venture is very community-driven… We want to build and expand a fitness-conscious community where people can share,” Chouksey pointed out.
“The platform now has fitness trainers and experts whom users can get counselling and training regimes. There are options where users can chat with their trainers, aside from getting customised nutritional and training plans. We are also working on adding video chats in the future,” he added.
The community now on the platform has crossed 5 lakh members and continues growing, Chouksey noted.
“Since it is very community-focused, FITTR and Squats have a lot of content and plans, including recipes from users. However, these recipes are heavily curated and we remove recipes that do not measure up. Most of them are from our counsellors and expert partners,” he added.
Squats model
Squats works on a commission-based, marketplace model and the pricing for specific services varies depending on the fitness expert and services being sought.