After IIT and IIM, how about affordable spas?

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad — most youngsters would do anything to get the combination on their resumes, for it opens doors such as few others do.

But once in a while, one comes across somebody who’s been there, done that and still thought nothing of leaving the comfortable, high-paying job that the combination helped secure, for a much harder life.

Call it the bite of the entrepreneurial bug.

So it was with Anurag Kedia and Saurabh Garg, both IITB/IIMA graduates, who reached for a canvass all their own barely three years into their jobs with KPMG and Hindustan Unilever, respectively.

They found a kindred spirit in Garg’s colleague Sunil Rao, also an MBA, albeit from SP Jain, and set out on their own.

After much debate and brainstorming, and visits to places like Italy and Singapore, they decided to introduce the middle class to a concept until then restricted to the creme de la creme — spas.

Spas in India were all charging over Rs 4,000 for any therapy, reminisces Kedia.

“Several people were not even aware of spas, while others were unable to use them due to the high costs. Moreover, there were no spas in the tier II and III towns.”

Thus started in October, 2008, just a month after the banking crisis in September, the first of The Four Fountains Spa (TFFS) in Pune, a city they felt had the right mix of student community, working professionals, and traditional middle class households.

TFFS offered therapies at less than half the price the five star spas charged, at Rs 900-1,200.

The idea is to provide a learning platform to customers in their own language about the various therapies, their benefits, etc, since most customers are first timers to spas, says the troika. And why Four Fountains? It’s after the four faculties of existence — body, sense, mind and soul — which the spa will cater to.

Initial funding for the venture came from Fulcrum Venture India, a Chennai-based venture capital group.

Today, TFFS runs as many as eight spas — in Pune, Goa, Manali and Aurangabad — through the venture-funded company CMYK Health Boutique.

Each spa, spread over approximately 1,000 sq ft, requires an investment of Rs 40-50 lakh and the company, which has a turnover of around Rs 2 crore, aims to reach the Rs 7 crore mark this fiscal.

The target is to set up 300 spas by 2014, in places like Bangalore, Mumbai, Bhilai, Jabalpur, Nashik, Nagpur, Sholapur, Kolhapur and Indore, etc through a combination of franchisees and company owned outlets.

“We want to be present in 70-80 cities and towns in India. With each spa, we try to reach out to 30,000 households through discount coupons, membership offers. We get between 700-800 customers in a month, most in the 25-45 age group,” says Kedia.