Fitternity Review

One of the subjects I enjoy writing about is health and fitness. Recently, Ritu Jhajharia, contacted me regarding Fitternity, the e-commerce start-up she represented as Vice president – Marketing.
Her mail read, “I represent Fitternity Health eSolution Private Limited (www.fitternity.com) – a one-stop destination for fitness enthusiasts helping them to learn, find options, book trials, buy memberships and achieve their fitness goals.”

Her mail also said briefly about Fitternity:
Our fitness focused search engine makes hyper-local fitness discovery easier – by providing detailed information including photos, videos, rate cards, offerings, facilities and user reviews on all fitness related services. (http://www.fitternity.com). But we aren’t just an aggregator website, we help customers find the best fitness options to suit their specific needs and even book unlimited free trials before they find their perfect fitness solution and buy subscriptions with any fitness service provider. We’re currently providing this service in Mumbai and Pune.

Having successfully established ourselves in Mumbai and Pune, we have recently had a successful launch in Bangalore and are soon going to launch in New Delhi/NCR. You can know more about Fitternity through our Social Media channels –
• Facebook – www.facebook.com/fitternity
• Twitter – https://twitter.com/FitternityIndia
• Instagram – @Fitternity
We are also in the process of launching our mobile app which will enable users to book workout sessions in a ‘pay-per-use’ format thereby combining different fitness forms and removing monotony from their routine, along with all the other services of the website. We hope this to be a disruptive idea in this category.

Events: They have recently concluded a seed-funding program, where they raised over 1.6 million dollars. They plan to use this money to improve their search engine and booking tools like their app. You can get more information via this link: http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/24/fitternity/.

Currently (July 27 to August 9th), they are having an event called Fitmania, where if you register, you get high discount on monthly subscription. You get to pay as little as Rs.99/- for a monthly membership and that is almost 99% discount for you. Many fitness centres from Mumbai and Pune are participating in this event. Big names like Gold’s Gym and Reebok Fitness Studio are associated with this event. You can get more details from this link: http://www.fitternity.com/fitmania.

My Experience: As usual, I suggested a website review and I was promised a 1 month free membership with a fitness service provider of my choice and further discount if I wish to continue the service for a longer period second month onwards. This sounded great and I requested Ritu to be in the loop all through the process of finalizing a fitness program for me. But I had one condition, viz. nobody in her team or the service provider would know that I was doing this for a review. On a previous occasion, I was jeopardized because I could not do a website review, which I started out to do, because in their excitement the concerned people did everything manually. As a result, I could not get the proper website experience. I was promised that it would be taken care of later.
Ritu told me to either call a Fitness Concierge Manager (FCM) via their customer care number or leave a message for them to call back through the option of “Request a Call Back” from the website. I took up the second option and I was assigned Vini as the FCM. I told her my requirement. I was looking for a female yoga trainer. I had already searched their website for options in my area. Both of us came to the conclusion that we should try a trainer from Premanand Yoga Centre. I also wanted to know if I could try a couple of places where Bharatanatyam dance and Zumba was taught near my place. Vini arranged for a demo session with the Yoga Centre. The trainer Prachi was a good one. She understood my requirements and suggested the training accordingly.

All through the process, I kept Ritu in the loop so that if there is a problem, it could be taken care of and would not happen to any customer of the website later. When I informed Ritu that a trainer from Premamnand Yoga had been finalized and the training would begin next week, she actually gave me a call to assure that everything was going fine and patiently answered all my queries.
She told me that if I had not used Fitternity for finding the fitness service (in this case Premanand Yoga), I would have been charged me for a demo session as is the case with most of the service providers and some of the other services would otherwise not have one at all, too. I also wanted to know how they would resolve if there were an issue with the service provider after the subscription had been taken. She told me that ideally, their work is over, once the service is finalized by the consumer, as now the fitness service provider takes over. But that usually applies to only those services which are not in contract with Fitternity.
Even for these service providers, if there is a problem even then, the concerned customer’s FCM speaks to the service’s representatives to resolve the issue. In the quest to provide the best possible experience to the users, Fitternity has developed a thorough evaluation process of the service providers, it works with. Those services which are in contract with them, have to undergo a rigorous testing period when many of the staff members from Fitternity have a go at the services even before getting the service providers on board with Fitternity. After a thorough evaluation of the services and after complete satisfaction only Fitternity features a service provider as a brand partner. Even after that if any issues are being faced by the users, the Fitternity team keeps working with the concerned service provider until the customer is satisfied.
As luck would have it, I had a bad experience with Prachi from the second session itself. I had told her in the beginning and kept hinting during the sessions that I would want the session to last the prescribed 1 hour each. But I started noticing from the second session onwards that she would come late and leave early giving me only 35 minutes including tips on diet.
Besides, she had several questions every day about my relationship with Fitternity and she would ask these questions, while I was doing workout. She was never satisfied with the replies I was giving her. I had told her that I got a gift subscription from a friend. That explanation was not enough for her. I for one would like to be secretive, while doing this kind of review. On the third day, I noticed that she had given me only a 30 minute workout. The moment the session was over I shot a mail to Vini, who immediately came to my rescue and contacted Premanand for a change in the trainer.
Being an ecommerce website and having several customers, Fitternity immediately resolved the issue I had with the trainer. They understood my problem and immediately asked for a change in the trainer. The way they came to the rescue of one of their customers needs to be appreciated. I would suggest to the readers, who are in need of such a fitness trainer, they definitely contact Fitternity, without any hesitation, since if there is an issue, your FCM will be prepared to solve it.

Monthly Subscription: The subscription that I took is worth Rs.3500/- for 12 sessions per month.