We have a fantastic opportunity in front of us to realise our vision of a happier and healthier world

Tell us about your original business.
I founded FIT Summit in Singapore in 2018 as a regional business community for fitness brands and executives to connect with each other. FIT was an acronym for ‘Fitness, Investment, Technology’.

It launched as the only business-to-business investment network for our industry in Asia and as our community grew, we expanded to run events in Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Thailand.

What inspired the launch?
Around 2016, I sold an events business I part-owned and launched a gym in Singapore to escape the corporate world.

As a new gym owner, I was incredibly passionate but equally naïve when it came to understanding what it took to be successful.

Searching for an industry network that offered help and support, I quickly realised there was none, so decided to build one.

I’m amazed we were the first to do this. There were plenty of established national events (Expro Fitness in Singapore, Asia Fitness Conference in Thailand, TAISPO in Taiwan, SPORTEC in Japan and GOIFEX in Indonesia), but these were mostly education forums and consumer shows, with no real participation from C-suite executives, owners and investors.

Tell us about the rebrand, and going global
Leading up to, and then into the pandemic, we started engaging with multiple verticals alongside fitness, including health, hospitality, wellness, leisure, sports, spa, longevity and employee wellbeing.

We ran virtual events during the lockdowns, further developing our global audience while also establishing a range of services such as business development support, thought leadership promotion, content emails and activations and industry reports. We’re also planning to launch a jobs board.

Today, we have a mix of retained, event and project clients who use a blend of our digital services and physical events to aid growth.

With all this in mind, the name FIT Summit didn’t accurately reflect our business, our clients or our collective ambition and Beyond Activ was born.

What was it that inspired this push for growth?
Our clients have been encouraging us for years to take our services global and help grow their businesses into new regions and market segments.

We chose to be brave, to step forward and try to make a difference globally. We have a fantastic opportunity in front of us to realise our vision of a happier and healthier world. We achieve this by encouraging investment into our industry, because a stronger, healthier industry lifts all boats.

I want to tell my daughter that her dad was brave enough to push ahead, regardless of the naysayers. Fortune favours the brave.

I’m all in. More so, I’m exceptionally proud of my team for working beside me to realise this vision.

What’s the thinking behind the name?
We chose Beyond Activ to represent our industry’s ambition to advance a more active world – one where we are able to embrace both the future, as well as each other.

We look beyond our status quo; beyond the industry we are today, to what we must become to meet the needs of tomorrow. A happier and healthier world is one with active bodies, active minds and active imaginations.

Who are the key people driving the business?
Our leadership team is made up of four people. Alongside me are Blair Campbell, chief commercial officer, Jolin Ma, chief operating officer and Daylin Limonte, chief marketing officer.

Have you taken on investment?
We’re a bootstrapped, private company and proudly so and the timing was never right to take on investment, especially with depressed pandemic revenue streams and valuations.

We’ll look at investment or acquisition in time, but for now we’re committing our time to delivering value to our clients and the industry.

Tell us about the recent deal you struck in the Middle East
We signed a three-year MOU with Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Investment to deliver services to the Kingdom relating to sports, fitness and wellness, including events, promotions, PR and market insight. The first project was our business and investment event, Beyond Activ EMEA, which took place in Riyadh in February 2024.

This new annual event will showcase industry innovation and excellence in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as highlighting international business opportunities.

We’re also working with partners in the region to take them with us to our other events [in Australia, south east Asia and the US], so they can explore new markets, new countries and new investment opportunities.

What’s the endgame?
I love our work, clients and industry, but as any entrepreneur will tell you, every day you carry weight and have to cope with pressure. My goal is to grow our company into a world-class business and then move on, leaving it to my team and the next CEO to use their skills and abilities to set a new benchmark.

At that point, I’d like to unplug, hide in nature for a few months, practice the wellbeing I so often preach about and decide on my next venture in life.