Daybreak - Are run clubs like rehab for the chronically online? Daybreak joined one to find out

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

Last Sunday, the Daybreak team joined a run club! Why, you ask? For research, of course. We wanted to understand the recent run club renaissance, that has taken social media by storm since the beginning of the year. Run clubs, in the traditional sense, have been around for decades now. But now, something has shifted. The new generation of runners is younger, less experienced, and relentlessly social. Young people are looking for new avenues to meet people in real life and to connect offline. This isn't just limited to running. Social clubs in general are really having their moment. These are clubs that are centred around an activity — like hiking, painting, reading, even knitting. In search of meaningful relationships, sometimes even love, they are putting down their phones and pursuing hobbies like never before. But what led to this sudden resurgence of social clubs? Was it the pandemic? Loneliness? Social media fatigue? Or something else entirely? Tune in to find out. Special thank you to the 56 Run Club for collaborating with us for this episode. You can follow them on Instagram to get the latest updates on their runs and events. Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at [phone]. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing and extensive post-production.

Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first studio. episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. It's 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning in November. I am at Cabin Park in Bangal and the first thing you see are always those gorgeous giant trees. They're so green and so fresh. I can I almost smell the leaves, you know.

There's a slight nip in the air. And I'm looking around and I see people walking their dogs, picnicking in the grass, filming reels. I can hear all these birds chirping. It's basically your textbook Sunday morning at the park. Then I look in the distance and I notice this group of about 30, 35 people they're assembling close by. A lot of them look like they know each other.

There's a lot of high-fiving happening. There's a little bit of banter. And there's also a small group of people that look a little more tentative, even nervous. I go closer to see what's going on. Make sure you have enough space next to you that you can warm up. How many people do we have today? 306 plus. Okay.

Most of them look like they are in their mid to late 20s. They're all dressed in Lycra and dry fit. They're clearly ready for a workout, which of course isn't at all unusual. this time of the day in Bangalore. Let me just put it this way. If you want to feel really inspired and also really inadequate all at the same time, take a walk around Kabin Park at 7 in the morning.

I dare you. Anyway, back to what I was saying. At the center of that circle, there's this guy with one of those tiny GoPro cameras strapped to his chest. It's clear that right now, he is in charge. Hey, guys, thank you so much for showing up today. Black for yourself.

So we're the 56 run club, I know a lot of new faces here so we're gonna like sort of tell you what we started, why we started and stuff flat. So started by me, Arpith, Manov and Akash and another person who's not here today. So the idea behind this was to sort of bring like a social group where we center everybody around fitness. Like where you come here, you get fit, you have fun and you have fun and you sort of bring like a social group where we center everybody around fitness. Like where you come here, you get fit, you have fun and you. you meet new people while you're at it. That's the whole idea, right? Sounds good.

Yep, daybreak joined a run club. I don't know how that happened, but it did. The voice you just heard was Arvin Shrikand. He started the 56 run club along with three of his friends, Arpit, Manav and Smeyana about a month and a half ago. Now, the four of them have run a few marathons together and they're really big on fitness and community. If you're wondering why 56,

it's because those are the first two digits of every person. pincode here in Bangalore. The reason they're doing this, apart from fitness of course, is to build a social club of like-minded people. Which is why they're also pretty finicky about registrations, unlike most other run clubs. So one thing that we wanted to sort of very evidently put out there was we wanted to curate a great experience to people who come, right? Because any day running is not a hard thing, anyone can just show up and run, right?

So why do you need to join a club? The whole idea is when you show up at 56 Run Club, you you get to meet new people, like people that you wipe with, people of calibre. Three is you get to sort of be fit and also while you're here, you get to have fun, right? So we have like a lot of activation games that we do. We do like, you know, warm up and cool downs together. So like when somebody comes to the 56 run club, it's not just like you coming, running and then going home, but it's an entire experience altogether.

I can vouch for the fact that it really is an experience. I admit it can be quite nerve-wracking, standing in a circle of strangers even when you're a full-blown adult, which is exactly why Arvin and his friends make it a point to break the ice before the run every single time. Okay, guys, so the idea of coming to the 56 club is not just fitness, right? You get to meet new people, you're going to make new friends. So we're going to do a quick lot of introductions

where everybody finds out what the other person does, what their name is and stuff. So we'll start off with name, which part of Bangalore you're from, and what do you do for a living? Cool. Hey guys, I'm Rajiv. I come from Kengiri. I'm a sound designer and sound engineer. I'm Rajiv and I'm a sound designer, sound engineer and I come from Kengeri. Hi, I'm Seneana. I'm from Khamana Hattin. And I'm in my family. Hi, I'm Suu. I'm also from Kamanatim. I have my dental practice.

Now, you're probably wondering what? What were we doing at a run club on a random Sunday? You see, Rahil here has been into running for the last one year or so. And you could say that it is slowly turning into a passion. So on most weekday mornings, you'll find her running around her apartment complex on her own. But every Sunday morning, she's been going to Cabin Park. And lately, she's noticed something changing. Okay, beginner runner.

Let me make that clear. Beginer runner. Okay. I have noticed that something's been changing. And that is that there are just a lot more young people, people in their 20s and early 30s, coming to the park and haunts, right, to run. You know, this intrigued me

because this is the same set of people who are infamous for spending a lot of time online, right? Myself included, they really care about how their life appears on social media and they're absolutely everywhere. Instagram, Facebook, dating apps like Tinder, You name it. Right?

They're everywhere. The thing is, we already know that the pandemic changed a lot of things for us when it came to socializing and making connections, right? But ever since it came to an end, there's been this huge resurgence of social clubs. Let me tell you what those are. These are essentially communities built around an activity. So running, reading, hiking, playing board games, even knitting. Yeah. I've seen crochet circles also.

So I've looked them up online. But what I notice is like a lot of them are free to join, right? And they're usually set up by people who really like that activity. But it seems like the nature of these clubs is sort of transforming. You're right, because now it isn't really about the activity at all. It's not about what you're doing. It's about hanging out, right? Meeting people, putting down your phone for a minute and actually connecting IRL.

Wow, I'm so proud because I know that one. IRL is in real life. Okay, so Rahil, suddenly you're saying that these people are done with the whole online socialising thing. Actually, that's what I thought. But after all my conversations with people associated with, you know, run clubs, I realize that the answer isn't as straightforward. Hello and welcome to another special episode of Daybreak. I'm Snigda.

And I'm Rahil and every Friday, we come together to talk about something in business and tech that interests the both of us. And it won't just be us. Depending on what we're talking about, we'll have some really interesting people joining us on the show. In this episode, we spoke to the lovely members of the 56 Run Club about why they run. We also spoke to Abel Joseph, who's the founder of a self-hosted social meetup platform called Jam. And also coach Pramod Deshandeh from Bangalore's oldest run club, Jainaguer Jaguars. Before we get started, we have a small request. Many of you have already done it

but we know for a fact that a lot of you have not yet rated us and followed us on whatever podcast platform you listen to us on, Apple or Spotify. So please, if you would be so kind, take a second and follow us and give us a rating and also please tell us what you think about our episodes. You can send us a WhatsApp text.

The number is in the show notes. Thank you so much. And now on to a very exciting episode. Hey guys, guys. Guys, focus. Come closer. Focus. So we're going to start running now.

We're going to be doing a 3 to 3.3.2K. And the route is from here all the way to the dog park, the gate till the end, and then you come back in the same route. Rahil, run clubs have really blown up, right, in the last year or so. I was, you know, looking them up online in other cities as well. And each one of them has, like, about at least half a dozen or so. And really popular ones also. Yeah. Yeah.

And the turnout is crazy. That's actually what got me interested in this whole thing. Because every time I go to Cabin, I see hundreds of these young people running. And I'm talking really early in the morning, like break of dawn early. Oh, wow. You know, but back in the day, run clubs were more for people like coach promote, right? Like serious runners. So when you met all these people who are a part of these clubs, were a lot of them also first.

First-timeers? You know, I was actually talking to Arpith. He's one of the co-founders of the club and he was telling me that there's a 80-20 ratio of novice runners to more experienced ones. And actually, that's linked to something else that I noticed, right? It was clear that it wasn't just about the running for most of the people there.

Actually, I asked a lot of the members why they chose to run with the club. I think meeting new folks and also it's my first time running around Kaban. Kind of crowd you're meeting. around here is different than the ones you meet in like Bangla night life right so definitely and I think everyone's here with the same goal you know just fitness and just get your body moving so I think that just helps running I think is like a group activity

you know I've run alone before and it gets boring really quickly also I love Kabin Park on Sundays it's just such a vibe love seeing Bangalaw wake up and not crib about traffic for once and then come out and like do their runs and it's such a beautiful place I think the networking part of it is a good niche, the part of it. I wanted to understand what changed and why now. And from all those conversations, there was clearly a recurring theme in what they said

that kind of stood out to me. Social media and the pandemic. Okay, let me explain. You know, there's a funny contradiction at play here because while a lot of people are here because they're looking for ways to connect offline, they're also discovering which clubs to join and which new activities to take up on social media.

Yeah. Yeah, okay. How do you pick like which run club to go to? Because you guys are like kind of jumping from one run club to the next. So how do you decide? So whichever comes on Instagram first,

we see the reels we scroll through. She send it to me or I find one and we just register and go. And whichever reel looks better. Yeah, whichever looks good. It looks like they're having fun. We come there. Okay, awesome.

That was Pranjul. I met him at the run club with his friend, Niharika. Last weekend they joined another run club at Cabin Park and here is what I found intriguing. They're not just discovering these clubs on social media. Turns out creating content for social media is actually a huge part of the whole process for most people.

Even some of the organizers are constantly milling about with cameras, they're capturing photos, videos of you while you run. And runners are also documenting the whole process from time to time. At the end of the day, everyone does still seem to be doing it for the gram. Right. And the other thing that you brought up was the pandemic, right, and how it has kind of fundamentally changed the way people are interacting with each other?

Definitely, I would say, like, being stuck at home for so long, now I find any opportunity to get out of the house, go meet new people, for sure. And this has been so fun. Like, she was saying last time, I just kind of pushed myself because of my friend and this time. It was so much fun the last time that I realized I want to come for this the next time, yeah.

That was Twisha. What she said about going out of the house and meeting new people is literally the basis of our next guest's latest business. His name is Abel Joseph and his platform is called Jam. We spoke to him about why he believes so deeply that the world needs more of what he calls agenda-less meet-ups and gatherings. How much? 60-40 meters in. Okay. We're 640 meters in and I'm really feeling it.

I hate of. Okay, so Abel, can you explain to us how Jam works? For sure. You know, I've been fascinated by human connections and social media and everything. But to kind of get people off social media and to kind of like go offline, that's kind of been what I've been focused on doing. And then comes Jam. And Jam is a product where you can sort of like put up a fun activity,

like a brunch, bike ride, you know, potluck. anything that you can imagine that you can do offline and you can sort of like publish that on the app saying that you're going to be hosting this and would anybody else like to join and all the jams are limited to up to eight people because I feel that anybody who's not a professional will not be able to handle more than that

and these are all very non-ticketed kind of activities that people can sort of like split the bill on or go Dutch and you know if it's like a nature walk obviously these are free and then you know once the request are to pour in, you can handpick whoever you want to hang out with, and that's basically how the product works.

And yeah, that's the summary of my journey so far and jam. Jam does not, I mean, it encourages like no agenda gatherings, so neither is it for networking, nor is it for dating. And I think, you know,

that's kind of what the world needs today, just to kind of have no agenda gatherings and meetups and yeah, so that's where jam focuses. For context, Abel launched one of India's first ever homegrown dating apps called Aile about a decade ago. Eventually, he sold it to Info Edge, but it would be fair to say that he is an expert in human relationships, especially on the internet.

Okay, Abel, I don't think anyone is better suited to answer this question than you. Run clubs have a little bit of a reputation for becoming an alternative to dating apps, right? you just need to do one quick Google search. Look up run club, look up dating. You'll find pages and pages of search results. And the thing is, it isn't just run clubs, right? It's very well documented that people are increasingly looking for love and for human connections offline.

What does that mean for dating apps? No, actually, you know what? Let me put it this way. Do you think that the age of online dating has come to an end? I don't. I think online dating is going to persist as long as there are singles. but I think what's happening in the space is that there is lack of innovation and products like jam is probably going to kind of like do some of that heavy lifting

that the dating companies are not doing. I believe in something, you know, it's a term that I coined together. It's called the cultural pendulum theory. And so what I believe is that once the culture is gone in a certain direction for way too long, it's going to swing back to a certain kind of a new subculture or a counterculture. So to give you an example, let's say, you know, we've been consuming non-witch food for hundreds of years. I think the pendulum will eventually sort of like swing back and it did. And then we had something called veganism, right?

Now, how big that subculture might get is completely dependent on, like, regulations and who might the earlier adopters be and how they might promote it and everything. Or if you just take like a religion, for example, we've been worshipping deities for a very long time. And then the pendulum swing and it, you know, now you have atheism and so. spiritualism and some people are like agnostic and whatnot. And so even with Isle, you know, you had a history of hundreds of years of arranged marriages and then the pendulum swing and then people started looking for, you know, partners by themselves. And so my belief is that because we've been online for so long and sort of like developing our, you know, connections and everything on the internet, it's time for pendulum to sort of like swing

and meet people offline. And so maybe 2019 was a little too early. But I think, you know, at least it's quite clear to me. All the signals point to people really wanted to meet complete strangers offline. Right. But what do you think actually prompted that change, right? Is it as simple as saying, you know, it was the pandemic. Once it was over, people just wanted to kind of get out with a vengeance.

Do you believe that there's more to it than that? Yes. I think, you know, all of our cultural changes would be a set of events that kind of contribute to that pendulum swing that I was talking about. But I think in the case of this new behavior that we're sensing where people are sort of like starting these run clubs and things like that,

I think that's the result of Chad GPD to be specific. So I was still at aisle when opening I launched Chad GPD and I played it with for a couple of hours and it was very clear to me that a bunch of things are going to get automated very soon. And the human productivity is just going to like spike up. So essentially what happens when productivity goes up is that you get back a lot of your time. And then you kind of have to sort of like figure out what are you going to do with this extra time?

Because it's not like the company is going to come up with different ideas and accommodate that time in a way that all of that additional time can be utilized to build new products or new services or whatever. So the comparison that I would draw is what happens in villages because they're time rich. So people living in cities are money rich and then people living in cities are time rich. And I was lucky enough to be born in a family. Although I grew up in a city,

my father comes from a village and I've visited many, many villages. So what happens in a village is that they wake up very early in the morning around 4 o'clock or 5 o'clock and the women, they usually go out to cut grass or milk the cows, but they usually do that in groups, right?

And then there's a lot of laughter and there's gossip and everything. and the men do something completely different. They sort of like, you know, step out and they go for a walk and they'll have random discussions with everybody on the road until they reach like a tea shop and they'll enter the tea shop. And even if they don't have like a cup of tea, they're going to talk about whatever is in the newspaper

and just have these random discussions. And then because they have so much time in the evenings, they'll probably go play cards or they'll play, you know, cricket or football or something like that. And I think this is going to happen in cities. because of the spike in productivity for us to kind of keep ourselves sane and just for the sake of our sanity,

we'll have to figure out what we are going to do with our social health. But what is the end game for something like a run club? Would they start charging, getting sponsorships or turn it into some sort of a full-fledged business? Well, Abel says run club organizers should definitely still hold on to their day jobs because businesses built around experiences have not had much luck in the past.

You had something called Airbnb experiences and clear trip experiences and whatnot. And they're all shut today. But that happened in the 2010s. And I'll get to why I think they got shut down. And now you have something called jams. This is kind of what we are trying to popularize as a company. So these run clubs, I think the reason for them to sort of like come up is because of the ease of starting that specific

non-monetizable business which is kind of like an Instagram page, right? So because the ease of starting like an Instagram page or like, you know, Google form or whatever, like a lot of people who are interested in socializing are putting it up and I think what's going to essentially happen

is there's going to be a lot of saturation as way too many people start this and that's kind of where a jam comes in because we're sort of like democratizing that for, you know, anybody can put up a run on a Sunday at Cabin Park or whatever. But there is this human urge

to kind of just go out and I don't know if they're doing it consciously or subconsciously because if they're doing it subconsciously eventually they're going to realize that or not they'll have to figure out how they're going to monetize this. And that's kind of what happened with the experiences like bungee jumping and wine tasting

and everything that used to happen in the 2010s. They could not make enough money to kind of make this like their full-time thing. And so So I think the only way for the run clubs and everything to survive is for volunteers to have like a full-time job and well-paid full-time jobs or the volunteers to figure out that, hey, you know what, we're going to make money somehow. But, you know, I think it's going to be very hard to make money out of, you know, these initiatives because of the historic sort of evidences that we have. but if they can figure it out, then I think that's going to benefit society in a big way.

Well, Airbnb and ClearTrip may have failed to make a mark, but that certainly does not mean that there is no scope for run clubs to get something in return. In fact, Rahel actually spoke to someone who has managed to do just that. He helped turn the oldest run club in Bangalore into a full-blown running academy. Going for a weekend run is going for a weekend party. You do it for social media.

Sorry, it's going to rattle some feathers. But, you know, as a coach, I really don't worry too much about what people feel because my job is to make things right and not what people feel. That was coach Pramod Deshande. He's actually quite a legend in the Bangalore running circuit. And if you couldn't tell already, he's also a bit of a purest when it's. comes to running. Coach Pramod was one of the early members of Jainagar Jaguars, Bangalore's OG run club. He in fact had a big role to play in what the club is today. I wanted to know how Jainagar

Jaguars was a decade ago and whether it was anything like the run clubs we see today. Jainaguar's was a running group. Like any other running group, it was around. And it's like any other running group, you come together. you run and go for, you know, idly sambar and it's done. How much to run towards the workout. All of that was not there. Like all many of this running groups, right? These are like-minded people who come together, enjoy a company.

They just run. But there is no structured training. Then coach Pramot came in with his background as an athlete. He was actually able to introduce structure and a regimented training program into the whole run club. And cut to today, the club isn't just a neighbourhood run club anymore. It's actually a full-blown running academy with a presence across the city. The thing is, the reason Jainaga Jaguars was able to pull that off at all

was because of the general demographic of the group. It wasn't young people with no background in running whatsoever. Yeah, so typically, see, this kind of running what we do, right? happens after 30, 35. When you start realizing that you should do something about your health. And that's where people start getting into this. Till that time, people are behind their career and trying to settle in life. So that's a typical demographic is where people will start.

These will be professionals who are kind of higher up in their career lab. and some established businessman. That was the scenario when I joined Jaynagar Jaguars. So it was never just what Coach Pramote described as weekend running. It actually comprised people who were willing to adopt running as a lifestyle. But at the same time, Coach Pramot is by no means saying the social aspect of running isn't important. He actually agrees with the fact that it is a big part of the experience, of the culture. A social interaction is an integral part of this running culture and I'm absolutely not against it.

I always encourage that because we are social animals. So that has to be there. But that should not be the focus as a runner. That should be activity which you do after you do something very specifically what you are there for. absolutely the social aspect has to be there that coffee or whatever you do because that keeps you going yeah that group keeps you going so absolutely it should be there but that should not become the focal point of your activity which is your fitness the thing is the people behind 56 run club are completely on the same page about that their topmost priority is fitness their

ultimate goal is turning non-runners into runners. We started this run club not with an expectation of, hey, you know, let's get people together, right? The expectation was always, hey, let's start something that is fitness-related. We started running together and then, you know, flowed downwards. So I think the first thing was always we, fitness came first, then the whole angle of, hey, getting people, again, like he said, of a similar calibre, because most people from Bangalore just happened to know other people from Bangalore. If you've spent enough time in the city, and I'm sure you have, you know someone who knows someone who knows someone,

and we're using that extensively to build this group of people. So I think the social aspect was second, the fitness aspect, is first. Okay. Okay. So from what I understand so far, the fact of the matter is that a lot of these people who are joining these run clubs and swarming public parks these days are not necessarily passionate about running. They are curious about it.

And they are definitely drawing. to the social side of it more. But most of the people that you spoke to Rahel, they had either never run before or ran once a week with the club. Of course, there were exceptions like the organizers or one or two other members, of course, who have already done a bunch of marathons and running is a lifestyle for them.

But most people were not in that group, right? So if I had to be the devil's advocate here, I get that a lot of people who run regularly, they get annoyed by the huge number of first-timers who are taking over parks like Cabin. It is a lot. But again, the flip side of that is, you know, these parks are meant to be used by everyone, right? It's not like, you know, you have to be able to run like some 10K marathon to be let in. So, you know, on that note, Rahil, I wanted to ask you, you set out to understand

what is making young people take to running these days and why social clubs are seeing this huge resurgence, not resurgence, renaissance, right? Renasur is a better word. So you spoke to all these 56 run club folks and you spoke to Abel also who gave you that business perspective and then again you spoke to Coach Pramod, who gave you so much context about what run clubs were like back in the day. Do you think you have an answer to your original question yet? Okay, let me try to answer this question. Okay. There are three things that stood out to me. Number one is that, of course, social media has a really big role to play.

The second is that the pandemic has seemed to compel people to become a little more extroverted. I'm also starting to see Abel's point about AI. Maybe in the long run, the fact that tech will be taking care of a lot of the work we do right now, maybe it will leave us with more time to socialize, to build relationships. Having said that, the contradiction I found is that while people are going to run clubs to find, you know, real-life connections outside of social media. media. They're also using social media to let everyone know that they went for said run clubs. Bottom line, human beings are very complicated. I have to say, hanging out with a 56 run club

taught me something else also. A lot of people talk about how Gen Z's and late millennials are the loneliest generation that they're so used to being alone, interacting with people largely online, which means that invariably they end up struggling when it comes to actually meeting people in real life, IRL. But two hours with this run club and I realized that that's not really the case. People who were kind of returning to the run club for the second or third time knew absolutely everybody.

They were so welcoming to the new people joining, us included. And it literally felt like I was part of a massive friends group. It was truly amazing. Let me put it this way, if my attitude towards running was a spectrum, I would be bang in the middle of Coach Pramod and 56 run club. I wanted to be a lifestyle. but I'll also be going back to join the club this Sunday to hang out with everyone. Right, got it. That sounds lovely.

Okay, we're done with 3.5K and I'll be honest. I think I'm going to hold on to my day job. Yeah, I'm good. I can be better. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our support. subscribe-only offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcast extras. Head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website.

Today's episode was hosted and produced by Rahil Filippo's and I, Sinkda Sharma, and it was edited by Rajiv Sien.