Right place, right time and right business

8 November 2025
Adarsh Gopal

My greatest nightmare is of being forced to run my business in 1980-90’s India.

The one with a negligible industrial base.

As a thought experiment, what kind of fitness industry existed back then?

How would people spend their leisure time?

I know it was not all bad. Nothing ever is. Air was cleaner. There was a lot less garbage because there was a lot less consumption. And there was enough food. But what we thought of as viable work was much more limited. I have a very hard time picturing myself as an assistant bank manager at SBI. Don’t get me wrong. Lots of money was there to be made in many ways at every point and time.

Anyways, it’s a good time to be in the fitness business. And the fitness business in Madras.

A good chunk of it is just luck. For my business to work, many many many things had to act as tailwinds to create more ready and willing clients. A few but not all factors:

CrossFit enabling a different kind of gym to exist
Jacked actors drawing attention to strength training
Covid showing people why physical capacity matters
Hyrox picking up the torch from CrossFit. As poorly thought out as strength training as a race might be, it does draw more eyeballs.
Growth in industrial capacity that let us make much better equipment at a fraction of what it would cost to buy it
Rise in per capita income making people more willing and able to spend on experiences
Amazing progress in science and communication about muscles, the human body and nutrition

So when I get to pay the bills wearing shorts all day long and live a decent life doing what I do, I remind myself it takes a lot of luck and timing I had no control over for things to pan out the way it did.

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