Health and fitness start-up Fittr has raised $11.5 million Series A from Dream11’s corporate venture capital and M&A arm, Dream Capital, along with sports-focused investor Elysian Park Ventures (the private investment arm of the LA Dodgers ownership group).

With these investors on board, Fittr will integrate sports fitness as an intrinsic part of its offering, along with investing to accelerate its growth and expansion into new markets, including North America, the UK and Singapore, which currently accounts for 30 per cent of the company’s overall revenue.

Commenting on the way forward, co-founder and CEO, Jitendra Chouksey, told BusinessLine , “Sometimes fitness can be monotonous and boring, which can lead people to miss out on the bigger picture and go off their fitness journey once they become fit. By integrating sports into people’s fitness journey, fitness becomes an outcome of the end objective that is to get better at a sport. Which is a much more emotional and intrinsic goal than just shedding a couple of pounds for a friend's wedding.”

To build such an offering, Fittr will work on building an ecosystem where users can participate in sports competition, and win prizes. The company will also be recruiting existing sportspersons, to evangelise the entire sports ecosystem.

“We have millions of sportspersons in the country, most of them rely on government grants or on getting a decent job to aid their ongoing sports training. However, that doesn't always happen, because of which a lot of dreams are shattered. I believe that by providing these sportspersons a job, which they can do remotely, along with helping sports aspirants in remote locations to access these experts — we can start a revolution and that’s where we are going to move,” added Chouksey.

Further, with Dream11’s investment arm coming on board, the company sees many potential synergies with the fantasy games company. One potential being having access to the large user base of sports enthusiasts on Dream11, which can prove to potential target customers for Fittr as well. Although we have not yet discussed these possible synergies, we will be working very closely to figure out how everybody who's interested in sports can not just watch from the sidelines, but also be an active sportsperson,” said Chouksey.

Dev Bajaj - Managing Director, Dream Capital said: “Dream Capital considers Fitness-tech as a key focus sector due to the highly overlapping demographics with sports-tech. Within this industry, Fittr's organic and highly engaged community has been particularly impressive. We look forward to participating in Fittr's journey, in building out a full-stack fitness-tech platform made for a global user base.”

Fittr began as a small WhatsApp group and has grown into an engaged fitness community. The philosophy underpinning Fittr revolves around fostering awareness and education around fitness and nutrition, alongside empowering its community members with the right knowledge, skills and support to achieve their fitness goals.

The brand has built a community of 3 million-plus people. It offers a B2C freemium model, offering free use of its diet and training tools, all of its features as well as access to a community of fitness experts and enthusiasts. Users can also get personalised guidance, customised plans and weekly check-ups through Fittr’s coaches, by paying a premium.

“Fittr's community can be for people of all fitness levels - whether they are athletes, sports enthusiasts and people who just want to lead a healthier lifestyle. We believe Fittr has the potential to become the dominant global health and fitness community, providing a marketplace and platform where people with any type of fitness goal can connect with coaches, access information and find support systems in their home country or thousands of miles across the world,” said Nikhil Bahel - Managing Partner, Elysian Park Ventures.

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