On a healthy mission

As more and more people get into fitness and start leading a healthy life, online fitness communities are emerging and helping them reach their goals. Pune-based online fitness community Squats has reached out to millions since its launch in 2016. And it just got bigger. Actor and entrepreneur Suniel Shetty has invested in the community, which has more than four lakh members. 

Jitendra Chouksey, founder, Squats, says, “He has joined Squats as a strategic partner. He came to know about Squats and got interested. When we met, we were talking about things that were similar in nature. He had the ideas and we had the execution team, which kind of aligned beautifully. We couldn’t have found a better collaboration.” 

With the investment and strategic partnership, Chouksey, however, assures that nothing has changed in terms of their area of focus. “We will continue to focus on what we had started off with — making 50 million people fit and create 1 lakh jobs in the fitness industry. With him coming on board, we are working towards our goal a lot faster,” says Chouksey, who comes from the IT background.   

Building trust 
Squats follows latest scientific approach to nutrition and training. The platform currently offers customised diet and fitness plans created by a team of expert fitness consultants. The team strongly believes that one can lead a healthy life with the right knowledge and tools. 

Ask him how he looks at their growth and he replies, “We have done pretty good for ourselves. But there is no time to feel satisfied because we have a long way to go. We have literally touched 0.5 million lives, which is like one per cent of the original goal.” 

The biggest factor that has worked in their favour is the ‘intent’ behind starting the community. “People started supporting us from the beginning as it started as a free model and it still is. We still don’t ask people to pay us. If somebody wants to get fit, they have all the information available for free,” he says, adding, “We only charge people when they want personal trainers. The level of trust was there from the beginning.”  

Social media  
Squats started off as a Facebook page but they gradually transformed people towards a healthy lifestyle through its online platform www.squats.in. Chouksey says that without social media, they wouldn’t have grown so big. “I owe a great deal to social media because all our partners and everyone associated with the platform are from different parts of the world. Without social media I could not have connected with these guys and without them, Squats would not have been there. Because of Facebook and WhatsApp, the company has been created and running,” he says.  

Growing community 
Today, Squats has more than 130 fitness consultants. Chouksey says that the 14 original consultants, who were his clients, joined the community after getting international training and certifications. “I cannot train hundreds and thousands of people, so I might as well start educating them. When we formed this group, a lot of our clients from diverse backgrounds, got interested after seeing the results and joined us. They believed in Squats and what we were doing. They quit their jobs and got associated with us. Trying to change somebody’s way of life for the better is a gratifying process,” he says. 

He adds that fitness, food and fashion cannot be done in an isolated environment. “That’s why the community... We are trying to shift the focus from food to fitness,” says Chouksey, who says that he was fat till he was in school and was teased by others. “I took it to my heart and started working out. I used to feel good and later, I got to know that nutrition and workout goes hand-in-hand,” he adds.  

Surviving competition 
Chouksey, who began counselling his friends on healthy living, later started sharing tips with others who sought his advice, and along the way, he too learnt a few lessons. 

“The biggest one is that, ‘If you keep your fundamentals strong, no one can shake you’. It doesn’t matter how fierce or strong your competitors are, as long as you stick to your ground and have the support of the community, nothing can beat you,” he says adding that competitors have also threatened them and tried to acquire them. 

“There was a time, when we thought how we are going to survive in a competitive market. Not only have we survived but we are doing pretty well for ourselves,” he concludes.