Rival Fitness Studio is a very successful gymnasium chain with Rs. 2.6 crore turnover. Subhrajyoti Pal Chowdhury is its founder and has come a long way from his humble beginnings. He hails from a small town of Silchar in Assam and came to Kolkata at the age of 19 years to complete his Bachelor’s programme from NIIT. He rose from the rungs initially freelancing and then working as a network security programmer at a multinational drawing a salary of Rs.22,000. That was until he decided to take the plunge into entrepreneurship.
Subhrajyoti confides that he was bad at taking orders and wanted to do something he could call his own. He was to some extent inspired by his father who was an entrepreneur himself and ran an educational consultancy. His father also always stressed on Subhrajyoti being financially independent instead of depending on him. That was not all, his parents also wanted him to shift to a bigger city in order to understand it and Subhrajyoti was keen on doing the same.
After class 12 Subhrajyoti enrolled for the three years (BSIT) course at NIIT Silchar. A year later he shifted to the NIIT Kolkata branch. He felt Kolkata being a bigger city and had greater career opportunities. In 2013, he joined an MNC and worked as a Network System Developer for the next 2.5 years. He quit his job in 2015 and decided to start his own venture. But he was not sure in which sphere that would be.
With enough time on his hands, Subhrajyoti next enrolled at a gym in the city. As he discovered there were two types of gyms in Kolkata. One kind charged very less money and could be found in almost any lane and the other luxury kind of gym charged a high fee. That was when Subhrajyoti sensed his big business opportunity. He decided to introduce gyms that had all the luxury facilities but at an affordable price. He invested in his idea with Rs. 8 lakhs of his savings and a loan of Rs. 20 lakhs from his father. A loan he promised to return in 1.5 years and with 5 percent interest.
In 2016 he opened his first gym and his brother also came down from Silchar to assist him. They kept the fees affordable and competitive compared to other gyms. His gym soon became popular with people from Tollywood. That is when Debaparna Chakraborty, well-known Tollywood actress also started visiting his gym. She would in future become his wife. In 2018 he opened his second gym in the city and a third in Silchar on a franchise model. His gymnasium chain is now a private limited company and he holds 96 per cent shares of it.
