The recent flurry over International Yoga Day had its insinuating moments with both political and religious seers brandishing their thoughts on Yoga’s relevance in modern times. As spiritual consciousness nudged at scientific temperament, the greater public debate continued on whether invoking the ‘Sun’, the ‘Air’ we breathe in can actually demonise or defy our religious sentiments. Despite religious brickbats, practitioners of this ancient healing therapy continue to vouch for its potential benefits. The trend is now going younger as ‘Yoga’ or ‘Union’ that aligns all universal and ethereal elements finds new meaning with GenX and GenY too. Bucking up the trend are two techies - young ladies from Bangalore – who have framed up their start-up concept – YogaKult, to salvage Yoga from its “serious” or “boring” notions to a lifestyle cult for all.
Buddies Aditi and Jyothi come across as any regular young techies, enjoying their work and social life - the only difference being they have forged their friendship into a lifestyle entrepreneurial venture --YogaKult. Both with masters degrees in Biotechnology found mutual camaraderie in the ITES (IT- Enabled Sector) whilst working for a KPO (Knowledge Process Organisation) in Bangalore. Their mutual enthusiasm for healthy living gradually fed their need for a start-up. Devised on the concept and benefits of traditional yoga but with a modern trendy tweak, their aim is to add a fun factor to yoga, making it inclusive across all ages and gender groups.
Co-founder, Aditi Mukherjee, a passionate dancer too, worked in the corporate sector for a little over seven years and the last two years as an Assistant Manager, juggling her work life like any other IT aspirant. However, the long hours defeated her regular dance schedules, rehearsals and stage shows; she finally enrolled in a yoga class to relieve stress!
“Initially, I was not too drawn to teaching yoga and took it up to become a better dancer and increase my levels of fitness and flexibility,” she said. Gradually, the fitness freak in Aditi pushed her to pursue a 200 hours module and gain credits via the Yoga Alliance USA certification in 2013. Post-certification, she gained the confidence to profess as a freelance yoga instructor. However, the artistic spirit in her no longer wished to juggle the rigors of corporate life and she took the brave decision to call it quits from the corporate world. Thus began a journey into the world of artistic yoga as a full-time teacher in November 2014. Eventually, the transition gave birth to her yoga brand- YogaKult in 2015 with pal Jyothi Salunke (Joe).
Aditi, calling it quits at her workplace, gave Joe the much needed nudge for a joint business proposal with her. “For me, I thought why not! Aditi was anyway freelancing in the field and for me this venture was something more of growing myself. Personally, I wanted to find out if I was capable of setting up a business, am I really interested? It was more of exploring my own business acumen too”, said Joe.
Joe, who moved on from media research into market research and analytics, continues her corporate stint with an IT major into Channel Sales Analytics. With over eight years of exposure in the analytics domain and in client facing roles, it was but natural for her to shoulder the operational aspects of YogaKult, leaving training and content designing of their yoga programs to Aditi.
The enterprise is a 50:50 partnership, with Joe pushing in seed capital for the enterprise. Aditi’s repertoire is based on her experience of having trained more than 300 people till date, as also catering to a not-for-profit CSR initiative in inculcating the spirit of yoga amongst children of construction workers as part of an NGO-linked activity. “The idea was to tell these children that they too could take up yoga as an alternate career and to get them interested.”
We realised that yoga was associated as a ‘boring’ fitness regime and as something which only housewives indulged in. This is where we decided to change the notion in the minds of our consumers.
“Basically Aditi had a clientele and we used that as our primary base. When we started in January 2015, we influenced a small client base that she already catered to and plans were to replicate similar modules to a targeted and bigger client group. My role extends across marketing and sales, client reach, participant and corporate registrations, vendor and event management that also include planning marketing activities, designing brochures and other such operational aspects,” explained Joe.
What started with ten has gradually grown to a strength of 60 individuals in the last six months. In fact, their event, Surya Namaskara-thon, the 108-round challenge held on April 12, 2015 at Cubbon Park, Bangalore, provided the duo a platform to identify future clients. “The event was not a competition but a health pinnacle to ‘Be the New You’. Yes, that’s our tag line. We practiced 108 rounds of Surya Namaskar with the yoga prayer. It was all about doing it the right way followed by Yoga Nidra (deep relaxation) and scrumptious breakfast,” said Joe.
“We started off via door-to door campaigning, distributing our brochures and talking to people. We then realised that yoga was associated as a ‘boring’ fitness regime and as something which only housewives indulged in. This is where we decided to change the notion in the minds of our consumers,” added Joe.
“The idea was to make people understand that unlike other regimes, yoga cannot be done in isolation and one has to rise above the physical self and in doing so, we initiate people on body awareness via coordination of movements and explain the need for simultaneous breathing techniques in the right prescribed patterns,” explained Aditi.
They both believe that although yoga has been in existence for eons now, the idea is to convince people to make it part of their daily lifestyles. “We therefore program our yoga and exercise content based on their requirements. We don’t promise people that we will help them lose ‘n’ numbers of kilograms, etc. We do not have a studio yet and visit client locations, apartment complexes or corporate houses to train participants.”
"Our triumph lies in seeing our students continue the regime and make it a lifestyle pattern. I have seen many of our corporate clients re-jig their sedentary lifestyle to a more active mode post our training sessions."
The duo work on a registration process that records client health issues and their individual goals so as to impart personalised training even in group sessions. Quarterly feedback forms enable them to re-tweak their modules to suit individual participants, groups or corporate. Most corporate dealings are routed via respective HR teams. “We have market parity and are not playing on the price. Our corporate rates are anywhere between Rs.1500-2500 per hour, and we tend to restrict our groups to not more than 25 people per batch.”
“Our triumph lies in seeing our students continue the regime and make it a lifestyle pattern. I have seen many of our corporate students re-jig their sedentary lifestyles to a more active mode post our training sessions,” quipped Aditi. They have thrown in a mix of Hatha Yoga, Power Vinyasa, Partner Yoga and Acro (batics) Yoga, to add punch to their sessions. For people with health restrictions, Aditi has incorporated simpler forms of particular ‘asanas’ to ease out any difficulty in doing the original pose without compromising on its health benefits, within the realms of the approved ancient yoga texts.
With an online clientele base in the US too, future plans are to create a pool of instructors across strategic locations in India on a franchise scheme. “However, I am clear that even with multiple trainers, the standard and quality of our training should not be compromised. I would prefer to train my trainers personally so that wherever we operate, there is a benchmark to the service we offer”, signs off Aditi.
By Sangeeta Ghosh Dastidar
