Regulatory clearance from the Securities and Exchange Board of India has been granted to health and fitness platform Cult.fit, paving the way for a public listing that combines a fresh equity issuance of up to Rs 950 crore with an offer-for-sale component through which existing shareholders may offload as many as 17.86 crore shares.
Filings with the regulator show that after the company — then trading under the CureFit Healthcare name before adopting its current brand — submitted its draft red herring prospectus in July, SEBI took approximately three months to complete its assessment, ultimately issuing final observations on 12 October. Under SEBI's regulatory framework, a company receiving final observations from the regulator is cleared to move forward with its public offering.
No price band, issue dates, or overall offer size has yet been disclosed by the company. Trading in the stock will take place across both the BSE and NSE platforms. Five institutions — Axis Capital, Goldman Sachs India Securities, Jefferies India, JM Financial, and Morgan Stanley India — have been appointed to manage the book-running and lead responsibilities for the offering.
Distributed among Cult.fit's founding partner and its earliest institutional backers, the offer for sale covers a total of 1,78,60,92,000 equity shares, each carrying a face value of Re 1. Chiratae — operating through IDG Ventures India Fund III as well as Chiratae Trust — stands as the largest seller in the offering, with the DRHP disclosing an offload of as many as 2.81 crore shares on its behalf.
Three further sellers are set to offload shares in the offering: MacRitchie Investments, acting as the investment vehicle for Temasek, with a stake of up to 2.47 crore shares on the block; Fitness First placing as many as 1.96 crore shares; and Tata Digital putting forward a portion of up to 1.59 crore shares. A stake of up to 1.60 crore shares held by Mukesh Bansal, one of the company's founding members, is also set to be offloaded. His ownership position amounts to 8.02 crore shares, representing a stake of 8.35 per cent in the company.
Roshan, who took a position in the company at an early stage, has filed to offload 6.33 lakh of his held shares. Among the parties offloading their stakes are Schroders Capital, Accel, Epiq Capital, Kalaari, Valecha Investments, and Bruno Eduard Raschle, each listed as a shareholder participating in the disposal.
A pre-IPO placement of up to Rs 190 crore is being considered, with any funds gathered through that route set to trim the fresh issue portion accordingly. Funds raised through the fresh share issue are earmarked for several purposes: settling or early-retiring a portion of existing debt, rolling out new Cult Elite and Cult Neo locations, channelling capital into subsidiary Cultsport to establish dedicated brand retail outlets, meeting ongoing lease, rent, and licence obligations tied to current centres, driving brand-awareness campaigns, and covering day-to-day corporate requirements.
Fitness centre construction accounts for roughly Rs 277 crore of the total, while ongoing lease and licence obligations at existing locations draw another Rs 218 crore, making these two line items the largest in the budget. At Cult Elite, machine-based floor work runs alongside instructor-guided sessions held in a group format. Equipment-led training sits at the centre of what Cult Neo offers as a gym concept.
Drawing on a Redseer analysis cited in the draft prospectus, Cult.fit operated 708 fitness outlets spread across 77 cities as at 31 March 2026, a footprint that the report placed at roughly four times the outlet count of its nearest competitor. Of those centres, 218 fall under direct company ownership and day-to-day management. Of the total outlets, 288 operate under franchise arrangements while a further 202 belong to independent owners who list through the platform.
Cultsport-branded goods — spanning apparel, footwear, equipment, recovery items, accessories, and cycles — accounted for upwards of 42.3 lakh units dispatched through the products arm during FY26, while the fitness services division drew a paid membership base of 9,87,020 over the same period. Roughly 70 per cent of total revenue flows from services, with the remaining 30 per cent tied to product sales.
Operational turnover climbed to Rs 1,720.61 crore during FY26, up from Rs 1,215.5 crore the year before — a gain of roughly 42 per cent. Compared with the Rs 926.66 crore recorded in FY24, the figure represents a gain of approximately 86 per cent across the two-year period.
Losses at the firm have continued, though the gap between outgoings and revenue has been narrowing. Across the three financial years ending FY26, the company's net loss contracted steadily — from Rs 888.5 crore in FY24 down through Rs 480.8 crore in FY25, before settling at Rs 251.9 crore in the most recent period. For the fiscal year ending in 2026, the company's adjusted EBITDA crossed into positive territory, registering Rs 144.8 crore. Profitability at the adjusted EBITDA level moved from a margin of negative 2.76 per cent in FY25 to a positive reading of 8.41 per cent.
Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori founded Cult.fit as a joint venture launched during 2016. Nagori's stake in the venture was later exchanged for a larger share of Eat.fit, the food unit that had been separated out from the parent company. An agreement reached in June 2021 saw Tata Digital commit as much as $75 million in funding to the company.
Structured as a hybrid deal, Zomato's acquisition of a 6.4 per cent ownership share combined $50 million in cash with a transfer of its sports-focused discovery platform Fitso — itself appraised at $50 million — bringing the total consideration to $100 million. Temasek's most recent private placement, channelled through MacRitchie in March 2026 as part of a Series G round priced at Rs 483.62 per share, brought the firm's ownership position to 11.88 per cent following a Rs 440 crore infusion.
Entrackr's estimates placed the firm's post-money valuation at Rs 13,668 crore, equivalent to roughly $1.45 billion, following the close of the funding round. Funding gathered across all rounds has brought the firm's cumulative capital to more than $720 million. Krishnaswamy holds the position of co-founder and chief executive, while Bansal serves as executive chairman of the organisation.
Drawn from the Redseer report referenced in the draft papers, India's fitness services sector carried a valuation of roughly Rs 25,600 crore during CY25, with forecasts placing that figure somewhere between Rs 48,700 crore and Rs 53,100 crore by CY30.
