Driving the Fitness Business, enhancing utilization & participation

Olygo – Sudipta Biswas
With over 11 years of professional experience in General Insurance and Health Insurance Industry across all major cities and channels, Sudipta Biswas caught the pulse of the industry. Having brief stints in sales -Corporate, Retail, Alternate Channels, Telesales & Ecommerce and Broking Business, he also managed International Business at ICICI Lombard and Max Bupa with Zurich Financial Services and Bupa International respectively. His Specialties include Strategic Planning, International Business, Broker Relations, Channel Management, Brand Development and Health & Wellness amongst others.

An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, his passion for sports & focus on creating a niche led him to founding Olygo. Sudipta shares with us, his story as an Entrepreneur.

What is “Olygo” about? What is the issue that the venture is trying to address and what makes you confident that it is a winning proposition?
Olygo is everything about sports and fitness; services and products. It offers all solutions related to sports and fitness for all customers including young children, young adults, senior citizen, corporate customers. In India approximately 60% people are interested in sports and fitness activities however; merely 1% of them actually participate in them and we want to increase this to the global standard which is more than 10%. In our country there are about 500,000 sports facilities approximately and capacity utilization is only 18 to 20% and we want to increase this to more than 50% and not only that we would help people create more infrastructure to take sports and fitness to larger audience.

What was the key factor/s that led you to take the plunge?
Passion for sports and fitness, large prevailing gap between supply and demand and sheer potential in the overall sports and fitness industry; these are few factors which drove me to take the big plunge. I am loving it!

Where did you meet your other co-founders / business partners?
I met Vishal Thapa while doing business with his company and Gautam Roy is my batch mate from IIMA (2003 Batch). In fact, I look up to both Vishal and Gautam as my mentor and guide

How did you manage the initial capital?
We pooled in money and our time to start of this business. We are basically bootstrapping till today.

What were the first 90 days like?
First 90 days were about pure excitement about the new venture and we put in all our efforts to prepare our plan, strategy. We spent a great amount of time to plan our phases as we intend to do a lot in this space including sports and fitness services, ecommerce in sports and fitness, any time sports and fitness (ATF), social community for sports and fitness and also the services around corporates.

How do you generate revenues?
We sell our services, memberships and products to customers through our vendors and partners and we get our fees/commission from our partners. In case of membership, we generate our own revenue by selling the memberships. We have signed partnership agreements with about 1500 sports and fitness facilities and more than 2000 professional coaches and trainers for both sports and fitness

Have you managed to raise any funding — angel / seed, etc?
We are at advanced stage of raising our seed money and we are confident of closing the same by next three months.

What is your guiding philosophy when it comes to doing business?
World-class customers service, partner management, best-in-class technology and employee-first approach.

Where do you see yourself 3 years from now?
In three years’ time we would like to have 1.2 million paying customers on a monthly basis which will make us one of the largest sports and fitness company in the world in this space.