A marked shift by corporates toward treating employee wellness as a productivity and retention lever is triggering a surge in demand for comprehensive health and fitness solutions, fuelling strong growth for startups in the space.
What was once considered an optional perk is increasingly becoming a core element of workplace strategy, opening up new revenue streams for corporate wellness ventures and health-tech platforms offering bundled preventive care services.
Pure-play wellness startups and health and fitness or insurance platforms, including Onsurity, HealthifyMe, Plum, Cult Fit, Amaha, QubeHealth and ekincare, are expanding their footprint with AI-enabled platforms that integrate diagnostics, doctor consultations, mental wellness support, vaccinations and personalised behavioural nudges, creating continuous and preventive health engagement for employees. The shift is now translating into strong performance metrics across the category.
Fitness and wellness platform FITPASS has recorded a threefold rise in its corporate client base over the past two years and aims to expand from its current 330 clients to 500 by 2026. Co-founder Akshay Verma told Fe that the company has witnessed a threefold increase in revenue from wellness partnerships driven by multi-year contracts, renewals and expansion within existing accounts. FITPASS current annual recurring revenue stands at Rs 174.1 crore, of which about 70% comes from its B2B vertical. The company’s recent partnership with Amazon India to introduce subscription-based fitness services on the e-commerce platform underscores the market’s growing commercial attractiveness.
Corporate wellness platform ekincare reported around Rs 90 crore in revenue in FY25, up 71% year-on-year. The firm, which claims to have maintained a CAGR of about 60% over the years, has expanded its customer base from roughly 15 corporates in FY18 to more than 1,000 today. Its client portfolio includes Capgemini, GSK, Toyota, McKinsey, BlackRock and KPMG. The platform has facilitated over 1.8 million healthcare transactions so far, including over one million diagnostics, 150,000 consultations, 20,000 mental wellness sessions and 60,000 vaccinations.
According to industry analysts, the acceleration is due to a combination of rising health consciousness and focus on mental wellness following the pandemic. Deepak Gupta, general partner at WEH Ventures, said many insurance intermediaries that traditionally relied on selling group insurance to build corporate access now need to expand into wellness solutions to deepen relationships and sustain business models.
Insurtech companies have quickly joined the race. Plum, which serves more than 6,000 companies across IT services, consulting, SaaS, healthcare and financial services, offers a suite of healthcare services including consultations, diagnostics, OPD cover, healthcare wallets, company-sponsored health camps and wellness sessions. The firm counts Swiggy, Zomato, Tata Cliq, Postman, Groww, Atlassian and Tinder among its customers. Plum has seen a 500% surge in companies opting for wellness offerings in addition to insurance over the past three years, along with triple-digit revenue growth from its healthcare vertical. It is investing Rs 200 crore to build a full-stack healthcare platform for employees. According to co-founder and CEO Abhishek Poddar, employers now allocate 10–15% of their employee health budgets to non-insurance services, up from just 1% a few years ago, and this share may rise to 30–40% within the next three to five years.
Onsurity, which works with more than 8,000 businesses, has nearly doubled its new client onboarding over the last two years. Co-founder and COO Kulin Shah said rising healthcare costs and regulatory incentives are prompting employers to adopt digital-first and scalable health solutions. He added that wellness is no longer positioned as a perk but as a pillar of sustainable organisational resilience.