The Man Building a Fitness Ecosystem for India’s Kids

What began with one trainer's belief in getting children to move has grown into a multi-format fitness and wellness ecosystem that has already reached more than 5,000 kids.

I first met Aditya Kedia around 2018, when he was still a fitness trainer.

What I remember most about him was his temperament. He was cheerful, patient and remarkably sincere, the kind of coach who could challenge you without intimidating you.

A few years later, when he told me he was building a fitness venture for children, I wasn't entirely sure what that would become. Perhaps some fitness classes. Maybe something resembling the hobby programmes parents sign children up for after school.

Aditya clearly had a much larger picture in his head.

Today, FitBuds has trained more than 5,000 children, operates through dedicated fitness centres and community programmes, works with schools and organisations, runs large-format fitness experiences and is building a technology layer around children's health and physical literacy.

Somewhere along the way, Aditya stopped building classes. He started building an ecosystem.

It started with his own health

Aditya's route into fitness wasn't conventional. He began his career as a banker in 2012. Like many people working long desk-bound hours, he gradually experienced the physical consequences: weight gain and back pain. That sent him down his own fitness rabbit hole.

Gymming. Cycling. Swimming. Nutrition. Learning how the body actually works.

His curiosity eventually became serious enough for him to enrol in a Fitness Trainer Certification at K11 School of Fitness in 2018.

By January 2019, he had left banking. And then his attention moved towards a group that receives enormous investment in education and extracurricular development, but far less structured attention when it comes to general physical fitness:

children.

A category hiding in plain sight

FitBuds is built around a simple premise: physical literacy should be part of growing up.

According to the problem assessment shared by the company:

• 25% of children in India are overweight

• Childhood obesity has tripled over the past 50 years

• India has 300 million+ school-going children

• Only around 1.2 million have access to structured physical education

The opportunity, therefore, isn't merely to create more exercise classes.

It is to help children understand movement, strength, balance, endurance and their own bodies early enough for healthy behaviour to become familiar rather than corrective.

That distinction is important.

Then COVID changed the conversation

The pandemic made the problem dramatically more visible.

When gyms began reopening after lockdown, I saw children arriving at fitness facilities because they had gained considerable weight during months of online school, restricted activity and screen-heavy routines.

By then, Aditya had already begun building FitBuds.

Instead of waiting for physical classes to return, the team moved online. Parents responded. Children trained from home. A community began forming around the brand.

As restrictions eased, those relationships moved offline.

FitBuds expanded into communities, centres, schools and events. Aditya built teams around the model and kept experimenting with how to make fitness something children actually wanted to participate in.

That evolution has taken the company well beyond its early beginnings.

What FitBuds has built

Today, the FitBuds model spans multiple points in a child's fitness journey.

The company currently operates:

• 6 FitLab kids' fitness centres

• 20+ FitBuds Active centres across Delhi NCR

• Programmes across 20+ communities

• Engagements with 5+ schools

• 100+ events and programmes

• Fitness training, assessments and physical-literacy interventions

• School, community, government and CSR programmes

It has worked with organisations including Fit India, M3M, Ashiana, Genpact, Raahgiri, Skill India, Heritage School and Kunskapsskolan.

And this is where the business begins to get particularly interesting.

FitBuds isn't relying on one format to grow.

It is building across physical centres, communities, schools, events, technology and proprietary fitness experiences — creating multiple ways to reach children without requiring every interaction to look like a conventional fitness class.

Turning fitness into something children want to belong to

The next layer of the business is around original fitness IP.

FitBuds is developing properties including The Grind Race, KidRox, TGIFC and TGISF — experiences designed to turn movement into something participative, social and memorable.

For children, that could mean a very different relationship with fitness.

Less obligation.

More challenge, community and achievement.

For the business, these IPs could also create a platform that travels across schools, neighbourhoods and cities without being limited to the footprint of a single physical centre.

That combination of fitness + community + experience may eventually become one of FitBuds' most distinctive strengths.

And then there is technology

FitBuds is also developing a technology layer around children's health literacy.

The vision includes workouts, assessments, quizzes and gamified interactions that can help children understand their fitness while giving parents greater visibility into their progress.

That opens up another possibility.

A FitBuds relationship doesn't necessarily have to begin and end with the hour a child spends with a trainer.

Technology can connect the physical session to a much longer journey around awareness, behaviour and preventive health.

For the right technology partner, there is considerable room to help shape what that experience could become.

Building the market while building the company

One of the interesting challenges in this category is that structured children's fitness is still becoming part of how Indian families think about essential expenditure.

Parents readily plan for tuition, music, dance, competitive sport and other forms of development.

Preventive fitness is gradually earning its place in that same conversation.

That shift matters because FitBuds isn't really asking parents to think about exercise alone.

It is asking them to think about physical development as an investment made during childhood rather than a problem addressed later in life.

As awareness around childhood obesity, screen-heavy lifestyles and preventive wellness grows, businesses that establish trust with families early may find themselves sitting inside a significantly larger category than exists today.

The founder behind it

Aditya has spent years building expertise around the idea he is pursuing.

His training includes the High Performance Leadership Programme with the Dani Foundation and Loughborough University, Trainer for Trainers certification from the International Physical Literacy Association, Animal Flow, CrossFit Kids, and personal training through K11 School of Fitness.

He has also served as Director of SPEFL-SC for Haryana and received the Shiksha Bharti Award in 2022 for his work around awareness and solutions for children's sports and fitness.

FitBuds is incubated with IIM Lucknow EIC and I-Venture @ ISB, with Aditya sharing that the company also received grant support from ISB in 2023.

Those credentials tell part of the story.

The part I've witnessed personally is simpler.

Every time I met Aditya after FitBuds began, our conversations would center around FitBuds. I was frankly amazed at all he'd managed to achieve as a one-man visionary.

A company worth watching

FitBuds has already demonstrated that there is demand for structured children's fitness across communities, centres, schools and events.

The next phase is about turning that foundation into something much larger.

Its combination of physical infrastructure, proprietary fitness IP, technology and preventive wellness creates interesting possibilities for scale — particularly as parents, schools and institutions begin paying closer attention to children's long-term health.

For investors exploring children's wellness, consumer health, fitness, education-adjacent businesses or scalable experiential IP, FitBuds is a venture worth watching.

And for technology companies or founders interested in building the digital layer of children's fitness and health literacy, there may be an equally interesting opportunity to collaborate.

Interested in working with FitBuds?

Investors, technology partners and organisations interested in collaborations can connect directly with Aditya Kedia.