Building India’s Preventive Healthcare Ecosystem through the Pandemic

Pulkit Garg of Aanya Wellness tells us about an abode for all wellness seekers where they can enjoy the benefits of the healing energy of nature. 

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times?

Pulkit Garg: Things are good, and we are really thankful to everyone for supporting us during this tough time, not only our family members but also the families of our team members.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Aanya Wellness.

Pulkit Garg: I started out as a freelance content writer, evolving to a content strategist and today, with the support of my team, the founder of Aanya Wellness. My journey to start Aanya Wellness was inspired by my own life story when I searched for an Ayurvedic centre in my vicinity and couldn’t find a credible source on the Internet as well, after wandering the streets for days. At the same time, I was into food blogging and was an avid reviewer on Zomato.com, which sparked the idea of setting up a preventive healthcare discovery platform, which along with its all verticals, is known today as Aanya Wellness.

I had been at the receiving end of the benefits of Ayurveda since my childhood, as I have Migraine since I was 4. Seeing the gap in the awareness of these benefits and accessibility is what got the team started.

How does Aanya Wellness innovate? 

Pulkit Garg: Depending on the need of the hour and user’s demand. We were incorporated in Nov 2019 and had started our full-time operations in Dec’19. We were at the cusp of executing our first retreat, our first event, and just 4 days before the retreat, the nation-wide lockdown was announced. We were in a place from which we thought there was no way out, as wellness tourism was the only thing we had prepared for. As we recovered from the impact of the initial impact, we saw the need for online wellness classes, telehealth consultations, and corporate wellness. That is where we revamped our strategy and overall execution to cater to the need of the hour.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping? 

Pulkit Garg: With the pandemic coming into the picture, our major revenue-generating vertical that is wellness tourism, has been at a halt because of obvious reasons. The way we battled it out was by bringing in Online Wellness and Corporate wellness as part of our offerings; these were supposed to be initiated in phase 2 of our execution, but given the circumstances, we launched them early, and these have helped us grow and battle pandemic with positivity and enthusiasm.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned? 

Pulkit Garg: A few difficult choices had to be made; we had to let go of the expenses, which weren’t really quintessential. We had to stop our growth plans and focus more on sustainability, and our priorities changed from increasing visibility to increasing sales.

What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis? 

Pulkit Garg: Hubspot, Zoho Books, and Asana, along with Gsuite, are the tools we are using.

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game? 

Pulkit Garg: Ayuruniverse, Healthify.me, Cult.fit, Mindvalley and many more | The way is that for us, even are competitors are a source of collaboration and inspiration. We aren’t focused on one particular vertical, instead, we are looking at the whole gambit of wellness services being made available for the end-user through our platform.

Your final thoughts?

Pulkit Garg: Persistence can win lost battles, and entrepreneurship is nothing but re-establishing the self-imposed standards of excellence every day. Move ahead, be it 0.0001% but keep moving.

Your website?

www.aanyawellness.com