Eighteen months ago, Hyrox did not exist in India. Last month, 8,200 people paid Rs 9,000 each to do a sled push at the Bangalore International Exhibition Centre. Attendees described the event as a “carnival”, and for several weeks, everyone was talking and proudly sharing their Hyrox timings. If you’re wondering what on earth is going on, well, this episode is for you. Fitness as an event isn’t new in India. Every wave of participative fitness in India solved something the previous one couldn’t. Marathons gave the urban professional class a finish line and an identity. Crossfit gave them a tribe and a daily ritual. Both peaked, both retreated, both ended up circling the same thin, affluent cohort in Bengaluru and Mumbai. Now Hyrox has arrived, and in one season blown past anything either of those formats built in India. The question is whether Hyrox is the next iteration of the same product, or something fundamentally different. Then there’s the business side of it. Hyrox is a premium commercial format, with revenue lines through event tickets, a global licensing model, a PUMA deal, and a middleman at every layer between the participant and the finish line. That commercial stack sits on top of a culture that markets itself on community and participation. Does that accelerate the fitness ecosystem or does it extract from it? And to find out that answer, Praveen Gopal Krishnan sits with two guests: Prasanna Akela is the cofounder of Belong, a personal training studio in Bengaluru. Before Belong, Prasanna was an early growth leader at companies like CRED, Apple, and Uber India. He’s also competed at the national level in ultimate frisbee and has trained extensively in endurance and strength. He brings the operator’s view: what does someone building a fitness business in India actually see when a global format like Hyrox walks in? “I’ve not seen this culture of people at scale wanting to get better. Everybody does their first Hyrox. Nobody’s like, how do I do my second Hyrox better than my first one.” Dilip Kumar leads investments at Rainmatter*, Zerodha’s health and fitness fund, which has deployed over Rs 250 crore across dozens of investments in health and fitness—including Hyrox India, Ironman, and Devil Circuit. He’s also a serious endurance athlete with a 2:55 marathon personal best and a finisher at the Boston Marathon. He has publicly called Hyrox as India’s “2008 IPL moment” for fitness. He came to this conversation with a declared interest and a clear conviction. “99% of the people are not intrinsically motivated. The invention of all these events kind of expanded that category — and that’s where we started investing.” Prasanna is building inside the wave and Dilip is investing and betting on it. Both of them are also participants. They competed in last month’s Hyrox event at Bengaluru. The episode tries to find out how long the wave is going to last—and what might happen after that. *Zerodha’s perennial fund Rainmatter Capital is an investor in The Ken. This episode was hosted and produced by Praveen Gopal Krishnan. Rajiv C N, our resident technical producer did the audio production.
