How many of us have bailed on our new year’s resolution of regularly going to gym within a month and lost membership fee as a result? Alright, let’s not get into that. What if I tell you that there is an app that kicks out those hefty gym membership fees out of the equation? Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, no.

YoFit is a Lahore-based startup that lets its users book gyms and fitness classes in the city on an hourly rate. How? You go to their app, see a list of gyms/classes, their rates and book one of your liking for a given hour.

They have a built-in YoWallet from where you can directly pay the gyms. The users must also deposit a certain amount as upfront money in the wallet to ensure some protection to the gym owners and credibility to the company itself.

Founded by Abdus Samad in 2017, it actually started off as a directory for gyms in the usual marketplace style where users could find a gym of their choice but pivoted towards the current model early this year. “The simple marketplace model didn’t have a sustainable monetisation scheme: there was a one-time commission we charged our partner gyms on each registration but that was it. The customer didn’t have to use our platform again so there was no constant income stream,” says Samad.

The new model not only gives better incentives to the customers by offering them more flexibility, it also creates the need for users to depend on YoFit, ensuring them a recurring source of revenue.

Samad had done wide-ranged research on how most of the gym-goers pay a hefty upfront registration fee only to abandon in only less than a month. “This one-time charge was literally the bread and butter of most gyms and was a major reason why many potentials customers didn’t join a gym,” he says.

Wait a minute! Why would any gym in their mind give up on its cash cow? Doesn’t make sense, right? Umm, it does, sort of. “Other than giving gyms the additional visibility, this offers them income-smoothing over the year. Rather than earning a bumper prize at the beginning of year, they can have predictable inflows now. Plus, this complements their old revenue model as most gyms still have their old customers so it’s a win-win,” he explains. Currently they charge a certain commission on each booking done through them.

But like most Pakistani startups, Samad’s market is also the urban middle and upper-middle class… basically, the ‘burgers’. And if the market has been limited to such a narrow segment of society, then how scalable could the startup possibly be, right? Why go for such a niche then?

According to Samad, the most important factor is obviously the affordability. What a fitness freak from Youhanabad would be paying for his entire monthly gym fee, the rich kids of Lahore will be spending on a single yoga class. They are also much more tech-savvy and want to be an active part of the global tech revolution that is underway. But there’s another reason: safety. In many cases, the low-end gyms do not have proper machines or a hygienic environment and if anything happens, YoFit would be blamed and Samad is not ready for that risk.

He might have excluded a sizeable potential market altogether but as far as capturing the target audience is concerned, YoFit has been quite successful. They have over 500 users plus more than 60 gyms across Lahore’s posh neighbourhoods of Defence, Gulberg and Model Town. Karachi is also on the cards where Samad already has a small network given that he lived in the city during YoFit’s incubation at Nest I/O.

Their beginning, however, was humbling to say the least. “The first 20 gyms we approached rejected us straight away so I had to change my sales pitch. I just needed the first two and then I knew the rest will follow, and thankfully, it happened,” he recalls. Even now, many gyms see YoFit as a threat to their business — an attempt to poach their clients. But Samad strongly disagrees. “We would like the industry to move towards our model but we don’t want to steal the gyms’ existing customers,” he clarifies.

The goal, though, is not limited to being only a marketplace for booking gyms on an hourly basis. They are currently working on introducing protein shakes and other supplements as well. “There are a lot of areas we plan on expanding into, like an eat map or group reservations, but we need more customers for that. Once we collect a sizeable number of data points, we can use them (internally) for other verticals and more streamlined marketing,” Samad says.

Currently the company is bootstrapped but they are looking for investors. To expand their reach, they are also launching a marketing campaign in the coming week after which YoFit hopes to penetrate other cities as well.

Samad also has his eyes set on schools and colleges where there is an ever-increasing market for gyms as awareness about fitness grows. But not only that, he wants those corporate clients too — the multinationals, the business process outsourcing companies etc.

Overhauling an industry and introducing a truly unorthodox model might seem far-fetched to many but the boy from Lahore is willing to risk it all.

The writer is member of staff:

m.mutaherkhan@gmail.com

Twitter: @MutaherKhan

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2018