Vikram Aditya Bhatia
09-Jun-2026
Fitness is now expanding, beyond wellness hotels and resorts
Inputs by: Vikram Aditya Bhatia, Co-Founder& CEO, Drive FITT
For years, fitness clubs in India were treated almost like an afterthought in real estate. They occupied leftover corners in malls, basements in residential towers, or narrow spaces tucked between retail units. Developers included them because buyers expected a gym, not because they believed fitness could shape the identity of a development. But space changes behaviour. A fitness club hidden away behaves very differently from one placed at the centre of a lifestyle ecosystem. The surroundings matter, because the experience people associate with fitness has never been limited to the workout itself.
Wellness Became Part of Everyday Living
The years after the pandemic accelerated that shift dramatically. People started redesigning their homes around wellness, creating dedicated workout spaces, investing in recovery tools, and building routines around fitness in a way that felt far more permanent than before. Commercial real estate responded quickly because consumer expectations had fundamentally changed.
Developers and retail operators began recognising something the fitness industry had understood for years: a well-positioned fitness club drives habitual footfall unlike almost any other commercial tenant. Members return four or five times a week, often during hours when retail spaces would otherwise see slower movement, changing the rhythm of an entire development. Fitness was no longer being viewed simply as an amenity package for residents or office-goers but as an anchor that could influence engagement across dining, retail, and surrounding lifestyle businesses. This shift is reflected in Drive FITT’s presence at M3M 65th Avenue, where the brand sits within a broader mix of retail, dining, and entertainment experiences rather than operating as a standalone fitness destination. It is also influencing the company’s expansion strategy, with future locations increasingly being evaluated through the lens of integrated, mixed-use environments that encourage consistent lifestyle-driven engagement.
Today, developers are investing in the design and build of fitness infrastructure not as an add-on but as an integral part of their residential and mixed-use offering. Most developers are following the playbook of offering a “live well, work well, eat well and play well”. India’s fitness market is projected to more than double by 2030, while boutique and experience-led formats continue to emerge as the fastest-growing segment of the industry. Today a 55-year-old does not graduate out of a fitness club onto a golf club or a walk in the park, but they are doubling down on their fitness club membership, personal training and single-modality studios. In Gurugram especially, this change is visible in sheer scale. Entire developments are now dedicating upwards of 50,000 square feet purely to fitness and wellness experiences – something that would have been almost unthinkable ten years ago. As a good example, M3M 6th Avenue in Sector 65 GCER today boasts of 100,000 plus of fitness and wellness offering around it anchored by 26,000 sq.ft. Drive FITT. Hotels have also started to re-purpose rooms and amenity areas to upgrade their health club (fitness & wellness) offerings. Even private clubs under management of RWAs are gearing up for this surge in demand which is spread across all age groups.
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Beyond the Workout
What the industry is really responding to now is not demand for gyms alone, but demand for environments that support a better way of living. The most successful fitness clubs today are not built around equipment alone. They are built around ritual – the feeling of returning to a space that supports performance, recovery, routine, and community all at once. After decades of building and operating clubs across different markets, one thing has become increasingly clear: when people find a fitness environment that genuinely fits into how they want to live, they keep returning to it. When that happens consistently enough, fitness stops being an amenity inside a development.
Cover Credits: iStock
