When were you bored last time?
According to many research studies, excessive stimulation may be negative for creativity and innovation. These studies recommend that if you have some down time, resist the urge to scroll, swipe, or shop the boredom away on your technology enabled devices.
“Once you start daydreaming and allow your mind to really wander, you start thinking a little bit beyond the conscious, a little bit into the subconscious, which allows sort of different connections to take place,”
Boredom Researcher Dr. Sandi Mann
Perhaps try running without music, going on a walk without your phone, or just quietly observing your surroundings without company. I would recommend running anyway!
See you in Bengaluru over 1-2-3 July 2022 for the Digital Street Regional Consultation perhaps over a short/long run.
Like always, please share it with others in your family, office or school who might be interested in Platform Businesses or even business in general.
And if a well wisher has forwarded this newsletter, please feel free to subscribe to it by clicking on the following link.
DTW
During the Week, International Day of Yoga was celebrated across the world on 21st June 2022. We have seen the power of Yoga when during pandemic people around the world embraced its practices to stay healthy and rejuvenated and to fight social isolation and depression.
Yoga practitioners emphasize its benefits through mindfulness, moderation, discipline and perseverance. In keeping with the spirit of sustainable living, UN theme for this year’s Yoga Day celebrations is “Yoga for Humanity.”
Platforms have as usual have helped us in slowing down during this reset times to include pause in our lives. Personally , I have seen an increase in mindfulness or consciousness of about our being or simply being deliberate about our actions/life. . These profound changes have happened through four interfaces of Food, Sleep, Relationships and Leisure. Let me start with a Three Book recommendation for you to make more sense of this newsletter on health and fitness- In Praise of Walking, In Praise of Slow and Why We Sleep.
We can understand Fitness and Platforms relationships through three interactions- making fitness accessible, creating immersive fitness journey and of course helping the fitness partners.
Platforms have made fitness accessible through both offline and online mode. Rise of platforms like ClassPass have helped users gain access to membership pass for accessing multiple fitness centers/options. These options include crossfit, fitness studios, circuit training, spinning classes, yoga sessions, zumba workouts and pilates exercises as available activities. Many of these platforms help the participating fitness businesses benefit by attracting new students and thus profitably filling excess capacity in their physical centres. Many of these start-ups have also started corporate membership programs to make it more accessible. Amongst the online options, HealthifyMe and Fittr are among the digital health and wellness platform that provides services such as calorie tracking, one-on-one nutrition and fitness coaching in an online mode. They also have diet and workout plans on subscription.
Advantages of these platform include an immersive experience and a judgement free environment. Users can leverage their online communities of fellow fitness enthusiast and coaches to connect, learn and grow. During and out pandemic, we have seen a combination of consumer expectations and digital innovation fueling growth in digital fitness leading to an immersive user experience. Advent of AR/VR and other digital tools have made it a social activity in the confines of your home or even office. Many of them create online challenges for their free and paid members to keep them engaged and active. One of my ex-student and current running buddy Prashant Choudhary started Garmin Indian Runners which has become one of the largest fitness community in India. This platform conducts exciting Monthly Challenges offering Running, Cycling, Walking and various fitness challenges to improve fitness, strength and endurance building in participants.
As a fitness enthusiast , growing importance of fitness wearables from Apple, Google and Amazon make them part of the evolving sports platform ecosystem. These platform based wearables like smartwatches or even heartbeat monitors have ensured that the enthusiasts have a more immersive experience while exercising. Most of the times they are coupled with dashboard including performance indicators/leaderboards and social connect available across all the platforms.
Platforms have helped partners in the fitness ecosystem monetise their assets, knowledge and network. Freemium Model users can access these fitness platform for free and also gain access to some basic features, while later on, they can pay a subscription to access some other premium features (e.g premium fitness plans, coaching services, ad-free experience etc). In-App Purchases monetization practice is usually implemented by few platforms distributed for free but offering additional purchases within the platform mostly digital goods including virtual goodies within the app. In-App Advertising is fast catching up in India and include most popular ad formats include banners, native ads, video interstitials, playable ads, rewarded videos and rewarded surveys. Paid Platforms simply ask their users to pay a fee upfront in order to utilize their services. They may start by providing a free trial in order to convince users of the value of the platform and then persuade them to spend more money.
With platforms, future of fitness is accessible, immersive and rewarding.
OTW
Over the Weekend, I had an interesting conversation with couple of IBS Hyderabad alumni who are managing NUEXPRO- An online fitness and health platform. They are team of certified professionals with a certification in sports nutrition and ACE and having an experience of more than 8+ years in the fitness industry.
With the future vision of providing a platform connecting various small gyms across them metro, tier-2 and tier-3 cities, linking the health with analytics and technology with the objective of changing the vision of the health care sector from curing to prevention, from people to professional we are moving ahead.
Tanmay . Satyajit and Madhur.
Good Luck, guys.
As part of our training for the Hyderabad Marathon 2022 scheduled on 27-28 August, few of my running buddies from Peerancheruvu Runners joined our IBS Hyderabad Runners for the Sunday Long Run on 26th June 2022.
As is the ritual over past years, the run ended with breakfast at Mess-1 in the IFHE campus- Aloo Paratha with some hot chai/coffee.
If you are in Hyderabad or planning to be around on 27-28 August 2022, please register for a race of your choice (5K, 10K, Half Marathon or Full Marathon) ASAP and start preparing for the 11th edition of Hyderabad Marathon.
Register NOW at www.marathonhyderabad.com
I Love You
Shailendra
OTM
Opportunities through MountainSpeak are available with magicpin for business development roles at Pune and Banglore. Please get in touch with Gaurav Kapoor, MBA2017 at gaurav.kapoor@magicpin.in
Digital Street aims to develop a framework for facilitating digital transformation of street vendors.
Thanks for your response to the guest recommendation for Digital Street across the country. The likely participants may have experience in digital transformation, informal sector, travel technologies, tourism, street vendor issues amongst others. They may come from government, academics, consulting, corporate, policy making, start ups, non-profit and advocacy groups.
https://forms.gle/Lyz8nsx7Gehf1TR58
If you are in Bengaluru on 1-2-3 July, do get in touch. I would be glad to send you an invite for the consultation and catch up in person.