Sequoia and Dream Capital-backed Fittr turns profitable in FY21

The Covid outbreak led to the shutdown of offline fitness centres for several months. Taking advantage of that, a clutch of online fitness startups such as Fittr have been able to grow their business during the pandemic.

The Pune-based community-first health and fitness platform has recorded a significant surge of 93.5% in its operating revenue to Rs 58.11 crore in FY21 from Rs 30 crore in the preceding fiscal year, as per the company’s regulatory filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) show.

Seven-year-old Fittr, which provides personalized guidance, customized plan, diet chart and training tools, recorded all of the operating revenue from the sale of fitness and wellness online services.

Out of the total operating revenue, 57.6% came from the sale of programs to domestic customers which grew nearly 70% to Rs 33.5 crore in FY21 from Rs 19.7 crore in the preceding fiscal year(FY20). The remaining operating revenue originated from services provided to international customers which grew 2.5x to Rs 24.5 crore in FY21 from around Rs 10 crore in FY20.

The company also collects revenue from organizing workshops and other ancillary services which dropped by around 58% to only Rs 18 lakhs in FY21 because physical workshops and events were restricted due to COVID 19.

Keeping in line with the revenue, the total expenses incurred by the company also shot up 80.1% to Rs 55.4 crore in FY21 from Rs 30.8 crore spent in total in the preceding fiscal year.

With higher enrolment of customers in FY21, consultant fees (fees of certified coaches and trainers) was the biggest cost center for Fittr that formed 57.1% of the total expenditure which grew 79.51% to Rs 31.63 crore in FY21 from Rs 17.62 crore in FY20.

Employee benefits paid by the company also grew 2.3x to Rs 12.64 crore during FY21 from Rs 5.6 crore paid out in FY20. This cost also included ESOP payments of Rs 61.6 lakh during the last fiscal.

Advertisement and legal & professional expenses shot up 35.2% and 2.8x respectively to Rs 2.15 crore and Rs 3.68 crore in FY21 from Rs 1.59 crore and Rs 1.3 crore in the preceding fiscal year (FY20).

Even with growth in the scale, Fittr has controlled costs and posted profit worth Rs 1.48 crore during  FY21 as compared to Rs 64 lakh loss in the previous fiscal year.

The company managed to have a positive cash flow this year as well, which grew 192% to Rs 8.6 crore in FY21 from Rs 2.94 crore in FY20.

On a unit level, Fittr has spent Rs 0.95  to make a single rupee of operating revenue and EBITDA margins have improved to 8.17% during the fiscal ended in March 2021.

Launched by Jitendra Chouksey, along with Sonal Singh, Jyoti Dabas, Rohit Chattopadhyay and Bala Krishna Reddy, Fittr was bootstrapped for the first three and half years. The company was part of the third cohort of Sequoia’s accelerator program Surge and had raised $2 million as its first investment from the program in April 2020.

In September 2021, the company had raised another $11.5 million in its Series A round which was co-led by Dream Capital,  the corporate venture capital and M&A arm of Dream Sports, Elysian Park along with its existing backer Sequoia Capital India. The startup claims to have a community of over 500 coaches and active users of more than 2,00,000 till now.