India’s best-known fitness brand is heading for the trading floor. Cult.fit, the Bengaluru-based fitness and wellness unicorn founded in 2016 as Cure.Fit, has filed its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for an initial public offering, according to filings reported by Entrackr and Inc42. The issue is built around a fresh raise of Rs 950 crore, paired with a sizeable secondary sale that could push the total deal toward roughly Rs 4,000 crore.
The move takes a decade-old startup — one that has pivoted repeatedly from boutique studios into a sprawling health platform — into the harsh light of the public markets. A listing will test a question the private market has debated for years: can fitness, a business famous for churn and thin margins, become a durable, profitable company at scale? Here is what the filing says, and what investors will be probing before they underwrite that bet.
The filing
Cult.fit’s DRHP proposes a fresh issue of up to Rs 950 crore alongside an offer for sale (OFS) of 17.86 crore equity shares, according to Entrackr. Because the OFS value depends on the eventual price band, the total issue size is not fixed in the draft, but multiple outlets peg the combined deal at around Rs 4,000 crore, with TechStory reporting that the OFS component could account for roughly Rs 3,000 crore of that. The company has also flagged a pre-IPO placement option of up to Rs 190 crore, which, if exercised, would trim the fresh-issue size accordingly.
This is a regular DRHP filed for public review — not a confidential filing — so the draft carries the usual detail on financials, use of proceeds and selling shareholders. Cult.fit has named a heavyweight syndicate of book-running lead managers, including Axis Capital, Goldman Sachs (India), Jefferies India, JM Financial and, per some reports, Morgan Stanley India, to steer the offering.
The timing is deliberate. Cult.fit is filing into a reopening IPO window for new-age Indian companies, joining a pipeline that has featured names across consumer, fintech and healthcare. For public investors, a fitness-and-wellness listing offers a fresh data point on how India’s markets price a consumer lifestyle brand that is still climbing toward the black.
The journey
Cult.fit began life in 2016 as Cure.Fit, co-founded by former Myntra chief Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori, with an ambition far broader than gyms. The original pitch stitched together four verticals — cult.fit (fitness), eat.fit (food), mind.fit (mental wellness) and care.fit (primary healthcare) — into a single “holistic health” platform.
What followed was a decade of pivots. The pandemic gutted the studio-based fitness model overnight and forced a scramble into live-streamed and at-home workouts. Some bets were pared back or spun off; the food and healthcare arms were restructured, and the company leaned into what worked: branded fitness centres, a growing catalogue of fitness products and equipment, and a subscription membership base. It acquired gym chains to buy scale and rebranded much of its footprint under the cult banner.
Today the numbers describe a genuinely large operation. As of March 31, 2026, Cult.fit ran 708 fitness centres across 77 cities and counted more than 9.87 lakh paid fitness members, having shipped over 42 lakh fitness products during the year, according to figures cited by StartupTalky. Backed by roughly $714 million raised across some 16 rounds, the company is valued in the neighbourhood of $2 billion — comfortably in unicorn territory — with a shareholder register that reads like a who’s-who of global capital.
Per the DRHP, Temasek (through MacRitchie Investments) is the single largest shareholder, followed by Accel, Kalaari Capital, Eternal (formerly Zomato), Tata Digital, Chiratae Ventures and Schroders Capital, alongside co-founder Mukesh Bansal. Several of these backers are selling into the OFS: MacRitchie is offloading up to 2.47 crore shares and Bansal up to 1.6 crore, with Fitness First Luxembourg, IDG Ventures India, Tata Digital, Chiratae Trust, Accel entities, Kalaari and Schroders also participating, Entrackr reports. Even actor Hrithik Roshan, a longtime brand associate, features as a selling shareholder, according to Business Today.
What investors will probe
The headline financials tell an improving story. Revenue from operations rose about 41% year-on-year to Rs 1,720.6 crore in FY26, up from Rs 1,215.5 crore in FY25, while the net loss narrowed roughly 48% to Rs 251.9 crore from Rs 480.8 crore, Entrackr’s financial tracker reports. Just as important for the equity story, the company says it turned EBITDA-positive in FY26, with adjusted EBITDA margin swinging to a positive 8.4% from negative 2.8% a year earlier. Services — chiefly memberships — supplied roughly 70% of revenue, with fitness products making up the rest.
That trajectory is exactly what the private market wanted to see, but it also frames the questions the public market will ask:
- Profitability and the path to net profit. Positive adjusted EBITDA is a milestone, not a finish line. Cult.fit is still loss-making at the bottom line, and investors will want to understand how quickly — and on what assumptions — losses close entirely.
- Retention and unit economics. Fitness lives and dies on churn. The durability of that 9.87 lakh-member base, the cost of acquiring and retaining a member, and the lifetime value of a subscription will be central to any credible valuation.
- The offline-online-adjacencies mix. With centres, products and digital subscriptions all in the mix, investors will scrutinise which parts actually earn their keep, and whether the physical footprint’s rent and expansion costs are sustainable at scale.
- Use of proceeds. The company earmarks roughly Rs 217.5 crore for lease and rental payments on existing centres, Rs 120 crore for debt repayment and Rs 75 crore for marketing, with a slice for new Cult Elite and Cult Neo centres, per the draft. That is a growth-and-tidy-up plan rather than a pure land-grab — reassuring to some, underwhelming to others.
The India read
Zoom out and the filing is a bellwether for a broader thesis: fitness and wellness as an Indian consumption theme. Rising disposable incomes, an increasingly health-conscious urban middle class and the normalisation of paid fitness have turned what was once a discretionary splurge into a recurring monthly spend for millions. Cult.fit is, in many ways, the clearest listed-market proxy that theme has yet had in India.
The harder question is whether a lifestyle brand can be a durable public company. Consumer-facing businesses built on habit and aspiration can command loyalty, but they are also exposed to fashion, competition from cheap neighbourhood gyms and boutique studios, and the ever-present risk that members simply stop showing up. Public shareholders, unlike patient venture funds, will re-price that risk every quarter.
Finally, the filing is another marker in the maturing of India’s new-age IPO pipeline. After a first wave of loss-making internet listings that traded roughly on scale-at-any-cost narratives, the market has grown more discerning, rewarding companies that can pair growth with a visible route to profit. Cult.fit’s pitch — a large, still-growing top line, sharply narrowing losses and freshly positive operating margins — is squarely aimed at that more demanding audience. Whether investors buy it will say as much about the market’s appetite as it does about the company.
This article is reporting and analysis based on Cult.fit’s draft filing and media coverage as of July 8, 2026; figures are drawn from the DRHP as reported by the outlets linked above and remain subject to change through the IPO process. Nothing here is investment advice.
