Bengaluru: Cult.fit, India's largest organized fitness chain, is asking public market investors to bet on more than gyms, according to its draft initial public offering prospectus reviewed by Mint.
Revenue from non-membership businesses such as its Cult Store products arm, corporate wellness, franchise fees, royalty income and advertising is growing faster than its core gym business, with product sales up 60% to ₹522 crore in the year ended March 2026. Revenue from services grew 31% to ₹1,104 crore in the same period.
The company remains loss-making, with full-year losses of ₹252 crore in FY26 compared to ₹481 crore loss the year before and ₹888 crore loss in FY24.
The IPO comprises up to ₹950 crore in newly issued shares and an offer-for-sale (OFS) component. Major investors, including Temasek, Fitness First Luxembourg S.C.A., Chiratae Ventures, Tata Digital, Accel India, Kalaari Capital and Schroders Capital, are selling up to 178.6 million shares through the OFS.
Yet 90.44% of fitness services revenue still comes from just four cities—Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai—up from 85.5% two years ago, even as those markets account for less than half of India's fitness industry.
The company is now concentrating on franchising and a mass-market gym format, Cult Neo, to expand into smaller cities, counting on a broader geographic reach and new revenue streams to strengthen its appeal to initial public offering (IPO) investors. The company operates slightly over 50 Cult Neo centres and has been opening about 40 such gyms annually.
Meanwhile, smaller revenue streams are also expanding rapidly. Income from setting up fitness centres with franchise partners more than doubled to ₹39.8 crore from ₹16 crore a year ago, while royalty income increased to ₹10.1 crore from ₹9.1 crore in the previous year.
Advertising income surged to ₹40.3 crore from ₹17.6 crore a year ago, underscoring the company’s effort to diversify revenue beyond membership fees.
The company is also increasingly relying on cross-selling across its ecosystem rather than acquiring new customers for every business line, with existing members accounting for a significant share of merchandise sales. Nearly a third of product revenue came from existing or former fitness members, while member retention improved to 50.88% in FY26 from 40.85% two years earlier, the document showed.
Franchises add to the numbers
The franchise model for its gyms is also becoming more important for expansion. As of 31 March 2026, franchise-owned centres had risen to 174 from 93 two years earlier, and more than half of all new on-app centres added during the year were franchise-owned.
As of 31 March 2026, Cult.fit had 987,020 paid fitness memberships, up from 833,032 in FY25 and 690,657 in FY24.
At the same time, the expense of designing and setting up franchise centres climbed more than eightfold to ₹33.9 crore in FY26 from ₹4.1 crore in FY24, highlighting the investment Cult.fit is making to scale a more asset-light network.
The strategy comes as India’s organized fitness market is expected to more than double to ₹37,700 crore by 2030 from ₹16,200 crore in 2024, driven by rising health awareness and preventive healthcare spending, according to a Deloitte report from July 2025.
Mint reported in March this year that Cult.fit is widening its playbook beyond traditional gyms, betting on affordable fitness centres, niche formats such as premium Pilates studios, and consumer products to drive its next phase of growth.
Top 4 cities win
However, the company’s financials also show that its diversification remains geographically concentrated in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai, suggesting the company is significantly more dependent on India’s largest metros than the broader industry.
That also explains where Cult.fit sees its next phase of growth. The company plans to expand its footprint across India's top 100 cities through a mix of company-owned and franchise centres, supported by data-led site selection and its lower-priced Neo format.
Redseer estimates that 58-60% of the country’s fitness services market now lies outside the top four cities, making these markets the biggest opportunity if Cult.fit is to reduce its dependence on metro consumers.
Corporate wellness is also becoming a meaningful business. Cult.fit now serves 971 enterprise customers with more than 2.5 lakh corporate memberships, while revenue from corporate clients has increased to 11.5% of services revenue from 6.4% two years earlier, reflecting employers’ growing focus on employee wellness.
- Cult Store product revenue jumped 60% to ₹522 crore in FY26.
- Franchise centres nearly doubled to 174, driving over half of the new additions.
- Metro dependence deepened to 90.44%, despite a push into smaller cities nationally.
- Franchise setup costs rose eightfold, showing real investment behind asset-light growth.
- Corporate wellness revenue share nearly doubled to 11.5% of total services.