Cult.fit builds operational muscle with Codex

Cult.fit is one of India’s leading technology-enabled fitness companies, operating 708 fitness centers across 77 cities and serving nearly one million paid members. Its business combines subscription-based access to gyms and trainer-led fitness classes with a growing consumer products portfolio spanning fitness equipment, accessories, workout footwear and activewear.

As the company grew, it wanted to solve more operational and product challenges without adding layers of process and complexity. By standardizing engineering on Codex and then extending it beyond engineering, cult.fit is helping teams across the organization analyze data, build tools, and move ideas into production. Alongside its Codex rollout, it is using the OpenAI API to develop more personalized member experiences, including through its AI Trainer.

For Santhosh Kumar, CTO at cult.fit, AI presented an opportunity to change how the organization works. “We wanted to become more AI-native in the way we run things,” he says. “How can we run our operations or transform our operations to be AI-first? What new customer experiences can we offer? And how can we transform how we run our organization?”

Standardizing software development with Codex

Cult.fit’s first major shift was in engineering. Before standardizing on Codex, developers were using a mix of coding agents and assistants. Different tools meant different conventions for repositories, agent instructions, skills, and development workflows, making it harder to share knowledge and reuse capabilities across teams.

Cult.fit wanted a shared platform around which it could standardize the software development lifecycle. The company chose Codex as that foundation. Repository structures, skills, testing, code review, and feedback loops could now follow common conventions across teams.

“Once we standardized on Codex, we could build our software development lifecycle around a single platform.”

—Santhosh Kumar, CTO, cult.fit