How this former IT worker cracked the fitness code and based a start-up

While operating with an IT organization in Pune, Jitendra Chouksey became the go-to guy for his colleagues’ health-related queries. Chouksey, the founding father of health start-up SQUATS, recollects an incident when a colleague requested him his health secret. “He instructed me that he is eating right from bananas to hen, eggs, protein shakes, and the entirety is healthful. However, it is nevertheless not operating out. So I instructed him that that is not the way it works. You should comply with something referred to as quantified nutrients, which I have been following for 10 years. I gave him the weight loss program, and he got results within three months,” he shares.

The incident turned into a life-changing event for Chouksey. After this, he changed into regularly approached utilizing human beings, who asked him approximately food regimen, recommendations, etc. As he turned into a full-time employee at that time and no longer had time to answer all and sundry who approached him, Chouksey wrote an ebook approximately his fitness regime, referred to as ‘Get Shredded,’ and uploaded it online on Sthe QUATS Facebook community, established in 2014. The reputation kept growing, and he responded back human beings’ queries, cleared their doubts online via the Facebook Group, and commenced engaging in health seminars offline.

“Initially, I did it as it was amusing, and I’m truely captivated with fitness,” Chouksey said. However, he quickly realized that it had changed into a larger problem. He had already won more than 20,000 followers on his Facebook page, whom he used to recommend. But, a lot of them might reply by announcing: “Whatever you have shared is honestly quality; however, I can’t comply with it on my own; I really need someone who can guide me.”
And that was a eureka moment for Chouksey. “I realized that it is not just that the information isn’t always available, and it’s now not like weight-reduction plan and education can not be done. It’s just that humans want some training, some motivation. And this is how this concept got here to my thoughts,” Chouksey shared.

Chouksey created a team and began instructing them approximately his health regimen. These trained human beings could then connect to human beings via his platform and teach and educate them online at a charge of Rs 5000,” he added. What began as a network to keep people in shape took the form of a business, and a website was released in 2016. The start-up no longer handiest supplied coaches to users; however, it also offered reimbursement if they have been now not satisfied with the service or a different instructor if they were not satisfied with the current one. The company, which began with 14 coaches, has a seventy coaches on board and has recorded over 70,000 health differences. SQUATS additionally launched an app, FITTER, in 2018, which thus far has over 2,00,000 downloads. Its Facebook network, too, continues to thrive and presently has five 00,000 contributors.

SQUATS recently secured an undisclosed investment from Bollywood actor Suniel Shetty and is going in advance with its plans to raise as much as $5 million within the next year. According to the employer, capital infusion might be leveraged to take SQUATS’ message of preventive healthcare to a much larger target market across the globe. The platform ambitions to clock an extra 1 million FITTER downloads by way of 2019 and get more than 400 worldwide transformation coaches on board using 2020. It additionally claims to have generated cumulative sales worth $8 million to date.