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Taiwan Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association
medium family-running small stores. The major
equipment come from the Indian local retail industry,
or from China, Taiwan or high-end sports equipment
manufacturing countries like the European and
American countries at high prices.
The changing lifestyle brings
tremendous potential of sports
equipment
Mr. Sarbjit Singh, the acting chair of Indian
association of Health and Fitness (IAHF) expresses
that there is a great health and fitness market in India
with high-level development potential. In addition,
under the changing lifestyle, processed food and the
popularity of the fast food industry attribute o the
quick increasing modern diseases, such as obesity.
According to the statistic, obesity is regarded as a
severe global disease. India is not exceptional. Based
on the 2014 investigation, India is ranked as the 3rd
fattest country around the world, just behind the
United States of America and China. As calculated, the
obese population in India is about 300 billion people
in 2013, that is, 15% of the obese people in the whole
world. The major reasons are food and living habits.
Thus, it is expected that the sports equipment market
is growing with a promising future.
A survey in 2014 shows that the fitness population
in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore is about 4.8
million. Mr. Sarbjit Singh expresses that due to the
high-priced sports equipment, it is a question if the
ordinary people can afford it or not. Nevertheless,
Indian people are willing to do sports at a fitness
center, which creates another type of market, fitness
centers. Currently, there is no sports association or
organization to take charge over the regulations on
sports equipment, the usage and safety standards.
The future challenges for the Indian government
include how to integrate all the fitness centers with
systematical licenses or operation certificates, coach
licensing institute as well as developing industrial
clusters.
In consideration of convenience, buying sports
equipment requires not only enough consumption
power to afford high prices but also space for
placement. Therefore, many Indian consumers turn
to fitness centers where they provide weight-losing
consultancy, weight control, and other various kinds
of fitness programs so as to increase revenue. For
example, Trueweight, a fitness company in Bangalore,
provides weight-losing, food and nutrition programs
etc. The average expense is about 3-month 18,000
Indian Rupees, that is, about 9,000 NT dollars.
Besides, embracing the intelligence era where
people use smart phones and the internet all the
time, smart Indian entrepreneurs turn to mobile