STARTUPS

From Printed Tees to India's Gym Floors: The Story of Cult.Fit

By Karostartup

He had a comfortable life in Silicon Valley.

There was the engineering degree from IIT Kanpur. There were years at tech startups in California. It was the kind of life many people spend a career trying to build.

And yet, Mukesh Bansal turned toward home.

He came back to India with a single idea: to build something of his own.

A Small Start in Bengaluru

In 2007, with two co-founders, he started a small company in Bengaluru.

If you had walked in expecting fashion, you would have been disappointed. This wasn't that. Not yet.

What the company made were customised T-shirts and personalised gifts. Mugs. Caps. Printed tees for companies. It was called Myntra.

For years, that was the whole story. A small business, doing small work, that most people had never heard of.

The Moment They Looked Up

Then, somewhere along the way, the team noticed something bigger.

Indians were starting to shop online. But almost nobody was selling fashion well online.

It was a gap, and they saw it. So Myntra turned. It left behind the custom gifts and moved into clothes, shoes and brands.

It worked.

Myntra grew into one of India's biggest online fashion stores. Then, in 2014, Flipkart bought it. The deal was reported at about ₹2,000 crore.

Mukesh joined Flipkart and ran its commerce and advertising business.

The Man Who Didn't Stop

Most people would have stopped there. Rich, respected, and still young.

He didn't.

In 2016, he and Ankit Nagori started something new. This time, it wasn't about what you wear. It was about how you live.

Gyms. Group workouts. Fitness, built like a tech product.

They called it Cult.fit.

What It Became, and What It Cost

Look at Cult.fit today and the numbers tell a story of their own. There are 708 fitness centres across 77 cities, with more than 9.87 lakh paying members. Revenue in FY26 reached ₹1,720 crore, up 42%. And the company is preparing for an IPO.

But the road has not been smooth.

Cult.fit still made a loss of ₹252 crore in FY26. That is half of the year before, a real step forward, but a loss all the same. Gyms are a hard business to make profitable.

And Mukesh? He is already building again, this time with an AI startup called Nurix AI.

From printed T-shirts to India's gym floors, and now to AI.

What His Story Teaches

• Your first idea is just the door in. Myntra started with mugs and tees.

• Pivot when the market shows you something bigger.

• A big exit can fund a bigger, braver second act.

• And profitability takes time, even for great brands. Say it honestly.

Which leaves one question hanging in the air:

Would you start again after a ₹2,000 crore exit?

Tell us in the Comments below.

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