IIM-A grads float firm for wellness venture

After setting up their first wellness centre at Infocity in Gandhinagar through their venture, BePositive Wellness Services, Rohit Shankar and Nikhil Vaswani, graduates from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) of the batch of 2006 will float a firm, X-Axis Lifestyle Sevices. The firm will oversee the expansion of its wellness centres across the country.

The first in the series of new centres will come up at Shivranjani Crossroads in Ahmedabad where space has already been acquired. The centre will host a gymnasium, a spa, a beauty saloon, a personal studio, an athletic track and a health cafe. The personal studio will function as a business lounge by invitation and will contain high-end circuit equipment.

Next on the company's radar is a wellness centre each at Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and Vishakhapatnam in the next three years.

Typically, the investment for a centre in terms of infrastructure alone requires close to Rs 2 crore. For the Infocity centre, Shankar and Vaswani took a loan but subsequent expansion will be funded by Sirisha Infrastructure, a Hyderabad-based company.

"Major IT and, oil and gas firms in the region are showing interest in the wellness services for employees. In some cases, where the office premises are far from our centre, we have suggested setting up customised wellness centres for corporates in their own campus which has already been taken up by an energy transportation and infrastructure company in the state," said Nikhil Vaswani, director, BePositive Wellness Services.

Rohit Shankar, the co-promoter of the company said the company conducted wellness surveys for firms to re-design tasks assigned to shopfloor workers, sales personnel and those in other positions in large corporations.

According to one such survey by the company to understand consumer preference for wellness services with a sample size of 272 people, it was found that 82 per cent of people in all age groups wanted to join a fitness/wellness programme to lose weight and 48 per cent of these people wanted to lose weight because they were suffering from an ailment like diabetes, hypertension etc. which could get complicated due to excess weight.

Elaborating on the preference for in-house wellness programmes, Shankar added that a survey by the company on corporates revealed that over 75 per cent of bigger firms (300 employees or more) had a resident/part time doctor visiting their office and that 69 per cent of large corporates said they were planning some sort of wellness initiative for their employees like opening an in-house gym and other facilities.