Oluwaseun Thomas

The Authenticity Lesson That Helped Payal Kadakia Build a Billion-Dollar Business Payal Kadakia Pujji is one of the most revolutionary entrepreneurs of our generation. She is the founder of ClassPass Fitness Company, which is currently “the largest health club aggregator by number of partnerships”. ClassPass has more than 30,000 health clubs in more than 28 countries. Payal Kadakia founded the company in 2013 after dealing with many personal struggles that led her to this billion-dollar success of a company. Before it was sold to MindBody in 2021, Payal Kadakia had grown the company from a mere idea into a brand worth one billion dollars in valuation. She did this through her authenticity, staying true to her identity, ideas, and beliefs. This article will discuss the authenticity that created the Payal Kadakia billion dollars business. Payal Kadakia’s Struggles In an interview with Gabrielle Reece, Payal Kadakia explained how growing up as a child whose parents were Indian immigrants affected her. As is often the case with children from one continent born and raised in another continent, Payal Kadakia had two cultures that did not seem to converge. Her parents had moved from India, and so she was Indian. Her New Jersey situation meant that Payal got immersed in the American culture at school. However, she did not live in an Indian community as her parents prioritized education and moved to a new home in the number one school district in New Jersey. Payal explained that she was often bullied for being different (as a 4 ft 11 Indian girl), which made her feel out of place. Fortunately, she soon found respite as she found a community of Indians about 10 miles from where she lived. She explained that interacting with the Indian community made her come alive and feel confident and beautiful. So, Payal Kadakia had a dual identity that she struggled to reconcile for a long time. As much as she was bullied at school, she was also awesome at academics and was a cheerleader for American football for about ten years. Nevertheless, this conflicted with her as an Indian because she was different in culture from her American society in some ways. She soon learned to be okay with being different from the others in her community. So, this trait prepared her for the Payal Kadakia billion dollars business. As she said, “by the time I became this woman who was sitting in the middle of fifteen investors who are all men, and I was the only woman, I had already been here before where I looked and felt different. I knew how to shine and how to make myself confident in those because I was so used to being the person who didn’t fit in.” She Was Authentic Through And Through… Before founding ClassPass and going on to turn it into the Payal Kadakia billion dollars company, Payal worked at Bain & Company as a consultant. She also worked in Warner Music Group’s Digital Strategy and Business Development Group. She had a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Operations Research and Economics. She had also been dancing since she was three years old and found the Sa Dance Company. The Sa Dance Company has achieved tremendous feats, getting reviews from The New York Times, MTV, and many other respected publications. So, when Payal Kadakia decided to quit working for the Warner Music Group in 2011, it eventually came down to dancing and fitness. It had started when she tried getting an open Ballet class in New York to no avail. Payal then decided to do something about it. So, she decided to create a Search Engine and Reservation System for fitness classes that would utilize dancing. It was called ‘Classivity’ and then renamed to ClassPass in 2014. Payal Kadakia genuinely filling the gap and solving a problem shows her authenticity. In an interview with Inc.Africa, she talked about how understanding herself and dealing with trauma played a role in creating the Payal Kadakia billion dollars company. She talked about when she and her colleague were maced and mugged at a coffee shop. It was a new experience for her, and she did not know how to deal with it. She went to work as usual like nothing had happened even though she had mentally shut down. However, she soon realized that it was important to deal with trauma. Here, she realized the importance of self-care, and she began to apply it in her role at ClassPass. This realization helped shape the development of ClassPass. The company, ClassPass focuses on health, fitness, dance classes, and accessibility. It fused things Payal found important in her life. Do you want to keep fit? Sure, you can do that through dancing. By doing this, you are improving your health and fitness. Also, remember that Payal Kadakia had tried to find a ballet class but could not. Hence, accessibility became an important part of Payal Kadakia’s billion-dollar company. They have done so much to make the company accessible to people worldwide. Hence, the company is present in more than twenty-eight (28) countries and has over thirty thousand (30,000) health clubs. The company has gone through several remodeling phases as they tried to improve services and create more beneficial practices for their members. In essence, we can say that her authenticity molded Payal Kadakia’s billion dollar company into the giant it is today.