Anytime Fitness, known for offering fitness enthusiasts round-the-clock convenience, has achieved impressive growth in 50 countries with over 4,500 gyms. The company now has ambitious plans to double its base to 8,000 units over the next two years while entering countries like Columbia, Morocco, Germany, South Korea and South Africa. In this interview, Drew Biks, Head of Operations–Asia, Anytime Fitness and Vikas Jain, Managing Director, Anytime Fitness, highlight how the company’ transition to become a lifestyle brand is helping them achieve their targets
How is the brand transformation helping you drive business?
This is due to our focus on better lifestyle where members may come only three days a week and work really hard to achieve their goals. This is also enabling us to differentiate from the competition which is growing faster than the penetration rate of fitness. In addition, we have always positioned our brand as fitness-focused and not bodybuilding. That’s the reason we have higher female ratio as compared to our competition. Majority of our members consist of middle-class younger generation aged 18-35 years.
Could you elaborate about the recent benchmarks of your India business and your expansion plans?
VJ: As of now we have a presence across 30 cities and 17 states with over 80 gyms catering to over 50,000 members in India. While we have grown our footprint at 50% year-on-year, there has been a steady growth in the number of members. Moving forward, we target to have over 250 units by the end of 2022.
How do you enable your franchise partners to grow and achieve their financial goals?
DB: We support our partners to be successful and achieve their financial goals. That’s the reason people opt for Anytime Fitness franchises and why over 40% of our franchisees are multi-unit franchise owners. However, we have a rigorous franchise selection process with global closure rate of just 2%, which we are quite proud of. We ensure that the size of the unit is not too large in order
to keep the operating expenses lower. We use a vendor network which enables us to keep the equipment and supplies acquisition costs low. In addition, we allow franchisees to select their price points between a standard range as per the locality. In fact, keeping our operational expenses low enables us to deliver profitability with just 400-500 members.
With the declining market sentiments, what are the consequences you see on the fitness segment?
DB: Fitness is one of the segments which have sustained growth during previous recessions. We see fitness as a feel-good factor which works in favour of our segment. Moreover, we have designed our fitness regimes and training sessions to cater to every pocket. The Indian industry has continued to grow year-on-year and still has very low penetration, hence, we do not see any reason for trouble.
Business Opportunities
Our Group Sites
Browse By Investment Range
Popular Cities
