 back to another episode of Start It Up. Today's business idea is for the fitness enthusiasts, especially those who love practicing yoga to keep their health game on point. So in today's video we'll tell you how you can become a yoga instructor or even start your own yoga studio. So why become a yoga instructor? Yoga is one of the most sought after fitness practices for a variety of reasons. The first reason being that yoga combines physical, mental and spiritual help. Yoga practice does not have any side effects and the chances of you getting an injury are very less. Also, there is no need to add protein powders or drastically change your diet unlike joining a gym. You do not gain excessive weight either if you can't keep up with the practice due to your busy schedule. And with mega celebrities like Jennifer Aniston and Gurnik Paltrow talking about the benefits of yoga, its importance has reached the masses and hence opened up huge business opportunities. So this is how you can become a yoga instructor. Just like teaching a school curriculum would need a degree, becoming a yoga instructor also means proper certification. More than 100 years old Kevalaya Dham Yoga Institute and Research Center in Lonavala Maharashtra is a renowned institution you can get a degree from. The Yoga Institute in Mumbai is another option that provides monthly and yearly courses for you to choose from. Alternatively, you can choose to study from schools that are certified by internationally recognized non-profit organization Yoga Alliance. Once you have become a certified instructor, you can either choose to freelance as a personal trainer, start your own studio or do both. Most freshers offer both the options as it helps in paying the bills. For freelancing, a beginner personal trainer can charge anywhere between 800 to 1000 rupees per session. As your experience and reputation grows over the years, you could start charging upwards of 1800 rupees per session. While deciding the price point, we recommend that you consider your travelling costs and equipment charges if you're providing any for customer acquisition. A good strategy would be to target customers who live within 5 km of your residential area. So instead of freelancing if you choose to open your own studio, then this is how your investments will look like. As one time investment, you will have to shell out 70 to 80 thousand rupees on furnishing and equipment, say for yoga mats. You will have to buy a good quality laptop to store all your data that will cost you upwards of rupees 20,000 and a POS terminal to handle payments will be another 7,000 rupees. You can save on the POS terminal by opting for app-based payments like through mobile wallets or DPI. Next is the location of the studio which is a very important factor. It should be in a quiet area but not too secluded because remember that people have to travel more than thrice a week. So as a budding business, you may not want to rent an expensive studio. The rent of a 400 square feet space in a market surrounded by residential colonies will be between 25 to 30 thousand rupees whereas if you open your studio in a suburb, it'll cost you much lesser at around 9,000 rupees per month. That's not all. Add another 10 to 12,000 of electricity and management costs to the rent. In place of renting a studio full-time, another option is to conduct early workshops in different locations in your initial days. This will not only help you save costs but also increase your customers. So for this, our delay of a fully set up studio will be around 1,000 to 1,500 rupees per session. Hiring a few instructors might be a good idea in your initial days as you would be managing multiple things. At least two to three an instructor could be paid on hourly basis which can cost you between 3 to 400 rupees per hour. The wage typically goes up with experience and customer base. Once your business has established, it would be feasible to hire full-time instructors. To talk of marketing, word of mouth is the best way to grow the fitness business if you want to be frugal in the initial years. However, we recommend taking the social media route for marketing as nowadays it is the most effective way to market your business. Marketing on Facebook and Instagram can cost you upwards of rupees 10,000 per month. So that's about costs. Now let's look at potential earning from running a yoga business. In 8 to 10 months after starting, you should be able to run 4 to 5 batches every day with 10 students in each batch. You can easily charge 250 to 300 rupees per head per session or 2,000 to 2,500 rupees per month for 12 sessions. So back of the envelope calculation shows that you can easily earn up to rupees one lakh per month after removing all the management costs that will be borne by you. So that's about yoga studio business. Stay tuned and log on to www.entrepreneur.com for more business ideas.