Fitness on the go

Parul Tongaria used to take a gym membership in Bengaluru but whenever she travelled for work, that membership remained unutilised, leaving her frustrated. Even if she found a gym or a fitness centre in the vicinity in the place she was visiting, talking to the in charge and working out a reasonable cost for a couple of days’ usage was a hassle.

However, her frustration gradually led her to a unique idea that she’s proud of today — ‘Gymmy’, a startup that allows its users to buy one membership that lets them access any gyms in its network across cities and even within the same city.

“I would be travelling for work for most part of the year and my membership was at a gym near my home in Bengaluru. It would take me hours to search for a nearby gym or fitness centre in a new city, leading me to compromise on my health while I was on the move. A year back, my tech team helped me put this concept online at www.gymmy.in. The idea is to reduce the friction of going to a gym and taking care of oneself in a cost effective manner,” highlights Parul, the founder of the startup.

She feels that the present generation works flexible hours and moves around a lot. “But we don’t focus on our health at all and this leads to stress-related conditions as well as back injuries due to lack of physical activity, says Parul adding, “I come from a family of fitness lovers. My father taught me yoga when I was still in school and we used to wake up at 5 am even in the Delhi winters and practice yoga everyday.

To me, working out is a form of meditation that allows one to silence out the city noise in the middle of the day. Yoga is very close to my heart; in fact, we want to enable people to practise any form of exercise even when they’re on the move.” The startup is presently focussed in Bengaluru and they also have a few gyms covered in Delhi and Mumbai. However, their plan is to be present in all major cities and be truly mobile.

An engineer from Delhi College of Engineering and an MBA from IIT Bombay, Parul says that her time at IIT permanently moulded her towards entrepreneurship. “I underwent a transformation of sorts, especially after interacting with so many brilliant minds, all in a short span of time. In such an environment, one’s mindset changes from looking at problems to focussing on finding solutions for most of them,” she says.

She is indeed glad to have found a solution to a major concern facing many and wants to take ‘Gymmy’ to even greater heights.