Health trends of the emerging metropolitans
PART 3— INDIA AND CHINA
Understanding how the world’s new Metropolitans pursue wellness is a fascinating insight into their fast-evolving lives. As part of a three-part series on health and wellbeing trends in emerging markets Dot I/O Health Trends and Inquiry Partner Nicola Gill explores how city-dwellers in different cultures around the world are embracing fitness to counteract their sedentary city lifestyles.
The ancient practices of yoga, meditation and martial arts still rule here in China — but cycling is making rapid inroads and gyms are gaining ground as popular urban fitness centres. The ideal physique? Lean and light.
In India, on the other hand, the cycling craze is well-established at all levels, with Indian newspaper The Pioneer reporting recently that American super-premium bicycle-maker Trek Bicycle is seeing demand for its products pick up while Navneet Banka, Trek country manager for India, believes demand will grow at 25 per cent per year.
The growth of cycling clubs both road-racing in the south and mountain-biking in the north has been a huge boon, and this has been aided by several cycling groups”, Banka added, saying that most Sunday mornings at Delhi’s India Gate you can see about a hundred cyclists enjoying themselves. “Indians are watching cycling events on television and most importantly they are getting into the spirit of fitness. Some of the customers we have for our high-end cycles are runners who are moving into the Triathlon space.”
But as with urban African wellness trends (Read Part 1 — Africa) Indian professionals are blending their own unique traditional and heritage approaches to health with modern gym culture to create a unique synthesis. For example, mirroring the ancient holistic Indian practice of yoga which seeks to produce a healthy mind, body and spiritual ease, the top health chain in Bangalore is Cure.fit, which has three iterations — eat.fit (lower fat versions of tradtional Indian meals) cult.fit (gym classes) and mind.fit (yoga and meditation) — all wrapped into a new app which also offers primary care appointments at its own modern, branded clinics for full check-ups, kidney and liver function and much more.
Yoga itself, though 5000 years old, is still very fashionable among the professional classes as is India’s traditional medicine, the ayurvedic system, which receives strong financial support from the Government and has a central place in wellness across all classes, with Western medicine not always held in higher regard.
Wearables have also taken off in a big way in India’s cities with growth in the range of 40%. Most of the market share is held by two firms. GOQii (with almost 16 % market share) and Xiomi (10 %). Menlo Park California, based GOQii is founded by Vishal Gondal — who founded then sold Indiagames to Disney for $100 Million.
The appeal to the professional Indians seems to be the connection with personal trainers –data feedback is received with coaching on how to achieve goals more effectively and users can also share data on social media. One uniquely Indian twist are the Karma points users collect. After completing certain goals they can donate the points to charities of their choice and this gamified approach has been successful.
Heading further East, to China, fitness and self-care is a swiftly burgeoning trend — with Government schemes such as Healthy China 2030 launched with the goal of having 530 million people take part in regular physical exercise and extending life expectancy to 79 by that date.
Among its population of 1.42 billion over 802 million are mobile users and 104 million have at least one fitness app on their phone. Over 15 million have gym memberships and 10 million practice yoga with running also now an ingrained trend. Sportswear sales grew 11 per cent in 2017 and health supplements by 27 per cent. Vegetarianism, long sidelined in a culture where meat eating signals prosperity, has grown 17 per cent to 50 million in the last few years.
Gyms and classes are also popular however, and in a country with ultra-tightly-packed cities where space is a premium and local brand SuperMonkey offers 24/7 pay as you go access to their basic, 50sqm cube-shaped gyms in expanding locations.
Yet tradition still reigns with traditional crafts such as lacquerware making, zen meditation and engagement with Buddhist, Confucius and Tao gurus hugely popular again. Even teahouses are making a reappearance in the urban landscape. While exercise trends from the West are being rapidly adopted they are always integrated with the dietary principles, traditional medicines and martial arts which promote a harmonious balance of body and mind.
ClassPass, which allows users to book at any fitness centre, says line dancing, ballroom dancing and brisk walking are all the rage with younger time-pressed, stressed professionals, although at the other end of the spectrum boxing has recently become wildly popular and many commentators say cycling is the next big thing to explode in popularity, although virtually unheard of as a health movement until this year.
“There are really no statistics available about Chinese amateur cycling market,’’ says Kent Gao Hui, one of the key players in Beijing cycling circles and founder of a small grass-roots company which organises cycling events, adding, “in China we do not yet have the mass participation base nor cycling culture, and it is still very hard to attract sponsors to cycling events.”
But Beth Hodge, strategic development manager for Asia-Pacific of OC Sports, which is bringing competitive cycling races to China, is optimistic and has told cycling publications “it’s a whole jigsaw coming together in China. New interest in Chinese pro cycling, a younger generation following a fitness lifestyle, the rise of the middle class with more money to spend on nice bikes — what happened in China with marathons, then trail running — we think cycling will follow.”
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Dot I/O Health uses DEEP data synthesised with the findings of our investigative journalism team to understand on-the-ground health trends.
