When workouts get an app treatment

Aditya Balachander was always interested in fitness and has been working out at the gym for a few years now. While interacting with some gym owners, the former media sales professional came to the realisation that most gym owners faced a common problem, which was retention of members. Since the dropout percentage in gyms is huge, he began thinking of ways to address the problem. This prompted him to kick-start Bond of Fitness.

“It’s a membership management suite that can be employed by gyms and fitness centres. It is a combination of a web app and a mobile app. The web app can be used by gym owners, trainers or administrators while the mobile app can be used by members of the gym. With Bond of Fitness every gym can have its own mobile app at a low cost,” says Aditya, who started working on it in May 2015. 

In July 2015, Aditya hired two teams to develop the web and mobile interfaces, which are aimed at streamlining the operations of the gym, on one hand and of course, enhance the customer’s engagement with the gym. He launched the suite in March 2016 and found an encouraging response with quite a few gym chains in Chennai opting for the software.” 

Having come from a non-technical background, Aditya initially faced a new set of challenges. “I had to get a grip of the technical side of mobile apps. The other hurdle was to get gym trainers to start using the software since some of them felt that this was additional work. Slowly, they understood that the app actually reduced their workload and helped save time as well.” 

Currently, Bond of Fitness is being used only in gyms in Chennai. “I plan to expand into other cities and market my product to gyms first in other metros and then in Tier 2 and 3 cities.”