Asheesh Grewal formed MyHealthBuddy in 2017. But, before that he had face many challenges in life that included staying away from his parents when he was just 3 years old and growing up at an uncle’s home before joining a residential sports school at age nine.
Asheesh, who is 40-year-old now, comes from Haryana’s small town of Bhiwani. Due to his father’s alcoholism that caused problems in the family, Asheesh’s mother sent him to his maternal uncle’s house in Delhi when he was just 3.
He explains, “In Delhi, I began playing cricket with my cousins and became fascinated in the sport. My mother made a difficult decision to enrol me at the Motilal Nehru School of Sports in Rai, Haryana’s Sonipat district. It was a boarding institution where I studied from fourth to tenth grade. Boarding school taught me to be self-sufficient, to live within my means, and to coexist peacefully with elders in the absence of family.”
Asheesh was a district level junior cricket player in high school. However, by his forties, he had acquired weight and was concerned about his health and fitness.
Asheesh explains, “I was always a sportsman, but my sedentary profession, unusual working hours, and eating habits caused me to gain a lot of weight. In my early thirties, I began to appear considerably older. It did not sit well with me in the least.”
MyHealthBuddy was founded as a result of his weight concern and a desire to form his own business.
PAMG Healthbuddy Services Private Limited, which began with Rs 13 lakh and four staff in 2017, has grown to a turnover of Rs 3.3 crore in 2020-21, with a jump in business during the lockdown months.
After completing his B Tech in Computer Science from Delhi’s Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology, Asheesh was hired through campus selection at Infosys in Bengaluru and worked there for six months. From 2005 to 2008, he returned to Delhi to work as a software engineer at HCL.
He then started working as a Senior Test Engineer at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in Delhi at a salary of Rs 15 lakh per year and left that job 7 years later.
When he realised he had gained weight and needed to concentrate on his fitness, he started a social media group with some of his friends. Asheesh, too, was tired of corporate life and had been considering launching his own business.
That’s when the idea struck him, he claims. I looked into it and discovered that just 15 minutes of exercise can have a big influence and contribute to weight loss. I shed 12 kg myself.
Asheesh’s company now employs approximately 67 individuals, including 50 fitness specialists known as Health Buddies who work remotely with clients.
Asheesh says, “We run a fitness and health certification course and hire five to ten coaches from a pool of approximately 50 to 60 trained trainers.” Coaches are paid a monthly salary ranging from Rs 50,000 to 80,000. At any given time, each coach manages roughly 50-60 clients. They communicate with their clientele virtually every day. There are currently 2400 clients, with around 20% of them based in Australia, Singapore, the Middle East, the United States, and Canada. While a three-month training costs between Rs 6,500 and Rs 12,000 for Indian residents, foreign-based clients pay between Rs 9,000 and Rs 20,000.
Asheesh Grewal has taken numerous fitness classes to keep himself updated. As consultants, he has two doctors on his team. But the most astounding truth is that the company does not have an office, and everyone worked remotely even before COVID, allowing them to work while travelling.
