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This research survey was done during Chennai marathon to understand how technology is helping people to achieve fitness goal. Fitness has become the latest buzzword. It is quite prevalent that for majority of Indian becoming healthy and staying fit has become one of the top priorities.
People are engaging in various types of fitness activities from marathon to outdoor trek, getting membership in gyms to bringing healthy diet in to their daily life. With this fitness industry is noticing a good growth with a rate of 23%. According to a Deloitte India report, fitness industry in India is worth USD1.1 billion and is expected to cross $3 billion by 2019. Even Government of India is giving great impetus on it through “KheloIndia” #Humfittoh India Fit programme. It is no doubt that we Indians want to involve in active lifestyle and be fit, but many times due to work and life challenges we succumb to achieve our goal. In this case technology is going to play a huge role in our life. Fitness wearable and mobile application are bridging the gap between individual and their fitness goal. Now individual can monitor their body vitals such as calorie, Heart rate, sleep pattern etc. It can also track distance travel, steps count, calorie burnt and much more. When this data is integrated with more advance technology they can also helps individual in getting guidance from professionals such as doctors and trainer which can help him to mange his health properly. With more advance feature these wearable can be easily integrated with smart phone and can work as communication tool. Just came three year ago, fitness wearable has achieved high level of penetration in Indian market catering to need of all type of people with respect to fitness activity. To understand how Indian people are finding this wearable technology and what level it is helping them to achieve their fitness objective, we did a survey of around 40 people, who were participating in Chennai marathon, understanding their views on the benefits and gaps in this technology. In which about 25% were female. Around 32 people said that it was not their first marathon, so it can be expected that they have fair amount of knowledge about fitness activity. Thus making these people a perfect sample for our fitness survey.
Time duration people are devoting to Fitness activity
Let’s first have a look on how many hours’ individuals from each age group is devoting to fitness activity
It can be noted that that people in the age group of 29-35 and 36-45 are quite active, they are devoting more than 1 hour every day for fitness activity.
Monthly expenditure related to Fitness activity
Now coming to expenditure on fitness related product and services.
Majority of people are spending in the range of 1000-2000 rupees every month. It can be seen that people in the age group of 23-28 are spending more than 10000 Rupees and some people of age group of 29-35 are also catching up with this group with respect to spending towards fitness habit.
Wearable effectiveness in achieving Fitness goal
During survey we found out many people were using wearable. To understand how this wearable is helping them in fitness activity, this graph will help.
The x-axis denotes the age group while y axis is frequency. On scale representation are 1: not effective, 2: somewhat effective, 3: effective and 4: highly effective.
It can be seen that some level of disagreement is between the age group of 36-45 and 23-28. In the age group of 36-45 all people find it effective while in the group of 23-28 mix reactions can be seen in the people. This points in the direction of gaps in the current technology.
Is Fitness wearable data accurate?
Wearables show different vitals and data with respect to the body performance. But are they reliable. This graphs shows people response to question “Is the data shown by wearable accurate?”
The x-axis denotes the age group while y axis is frequency. On scale representation are 1: not effective, 2: somewhat effective, 3: effective and 4: highly effective. Overall it can be understood that the current technology is not effective in addressing the female health issue. So there is technology gap present if improved can make these wearable effective in addressing this issue.
How effective the wearable is in addressing female health issue?
Wearable technology is helping people across age group but it is helping to address female health issue. This graph will help us to know how effective the technology concerning this issue.
The x-axis denotes the age group while y axis is frequency. On scale representation are 1: not effective, 2: somewhat effective, 3: effective and 4: highly effective. Overall it can be understood that the current technology is not effective in addressing the female health issue. So there is technology gap present if improved can make these wearable effective in addressing this issue.
Significance of Fitness Trainer
Fitness guidance plays a critical role for a person who embarks in a journey to become fit and healthy. One of the sources of it is Fitness trainer. They provide personalized information to a person based upon his/ her body parameters. To understand how effective people find fitness trainer to achieve their fitness goals.
In the age group of 36-45 people are finding it significant but it can be seen across the groups many people are not finding them significant. This shows people needs for fitness guidance.
This survey opened new dimensions in the current fitness technology integration in our daily life, helping us to know which the domains wearables are strong and where they are weak in not meeting the customer expectation. For instance the millennials, who comprise of 40% of Indian population, who gave mixed responses regarding the effectiveness of the wearable technology. This can be certainly taken positive and can be worked upon making these devices effective in meeting customer need. Recently new start-ups have emerged in this space which wants to capture the market with slew of new technology, for example Healthifyme is leveraging itself by providing health advice from various professional such as doctor and fitness trainer on a digital platform, this make the whole customer experience very personalized. The professional analyse the data and provide feedback and advice via video chat or text messages. So can we expect that latest technology such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will be going to play huge role in this arena, as they will not only helps in critically analysing the vast amount of data but also provide real time affective feedback to the user which will be highly personalized, fast and cost effective, as it can be seen how it is helping other industries. Moreover there is no doubt that technology will help in making India fit.
- Mr.Sourav Gupta