About WTF Gyms

What WTF stands for

The company trades as WTF Gyms, and people know it by the three letters. You will find different expansions of "WTF" on directory sites and social posts, and some of them are simply wrong. On this site the brand is WTF Gyms, and its franchise is WTF BLACK.

What the name stands for in practice is a way of running gyms: well-equipped floors, trained staff and systems that work the same way across every WTF gym. The company's tagline is "Fitness Simplified", and the franchise motto is "We build it. We run it. You own it."

Founder: Vishal Nigam

WTF Gyms was founded by Vishal Nigam, who is its Founder and CEO. He started WTF in Noida in 2021 and has built it into a multi-city gym operator with a franchise arm. He was featured with WTF on Shark Tank India.

"We are not building another gym chain. We are building the operating system for fitness." Vishal Nigam, Founder, WTF Gyms

You can follow his work on LinkedIn and on his YouTube channel, where he talks about running gyms and the business of fitness.

Timeline since 2021

WTF in numbers

WTF is more than a set of gyms. It builds the pieces a gym needs in-house, so that a gym runs the same way wherever it is:

• Gym operations: hiring, training, sales, retention and daily management across every floor.
• Equipment: an in-house equipment arm that plans and supplies commercial-grade equipment.
• Training academy: a standard way of hiring and training trainers and staff.
• Technology: member app, CRM, access control and reporting.
• Supplements and merchandise: WTF-branded products sold on the gym floor.

WTF Gyms does not publish revenue figures on this site. For the locations of WTF gyms, see WTF presence.

wtfgyms.com (members) vs wtfgymsfranchise.com (owners)

WTF has two websites, for two very different visitors:

If you are looking for a membership, wtfgyms.com is the right place; the franchise team on this site handles ownership enquiries only. Members of a WTF BLACK gym get the same WTF experience as members of any other WTF gym, because the same WTF team runs it. That consistency is what an owner is buying into: a brand members already know, and an operator that has already run the playbook on 60+ floors.

WTF BLACK, the franchise

WTF BLACK is the WTF gym franchise. It is fully managed: WTF selects and validates the site, designs and builds the gym, equips it, hires and trains the team, launches it and runs it every day. The investor owns the gym and its P&L.

1. Market research and site selection: WTF studies the catchment and locks the right location before the investor commits.
2. Design and equipment planning: layout, zoning and commercial-grade equipment, planned end to end.
3. Recruitment and training: WTF hires and trains the whole team on the WTF way of running a gym.
4. Pre-launch marketing: brand and local marketing to build a pipeline of members before opening day.
5. Launch: an opening designed to turn enquiries into members.
6. Operate and improve: WTF runs sales, retention and operations every day, and the owner sees the numbers in regular reports.

There is no royalty and no revenue share. The owner pays a fixed monthly Power Fee of about ₹1 lakh, which escalates yearly like other costs. WTF-run gyms typically reach operating breakeven in 10 to 18 months depending on format; that is not payback, and recovering the capital typically takes around 5 years. Returns are not guaranteed. Compare the formats or read the official franchise cost.

Press and media

• Shark Tank India: WTF Gyms and founder Vishal Nigam were featured on the show.
• Franchise India, 2023: Franchise Startup of the Year (Fitness).
• YouTube: founder videos on gyms and fitness business at @vishalnigamwtf.
• Instagram and YouTube: the WTF Gyms brand channels at @wtfgyms.

For media enquiries about the franchise, write to franchise@wtfgyms.com. Figures quoted about WTF elsewhere online are not always correct; the numbers on this page and on the cost page are the official ones.

Frequently asked questions