← Introduction To Pungra · Lesson 6 of 6 · 10 minutes
The Pungra story
Pungra’s founder, Ravi Sandhu, calls himself the custodian of the idea. It came from many people and many experiences.
1999: dancing as a way to keep exercising
- As a teenager he was overweight. By 17 he had lost weight and become enthusiastic about exercise, having tried football, martial arts, badminton and swimming.
- He wanted something he would keep showing up for. He noticed he only enjoyed running with good music, so he flipped it: choose the music first, then the exercise.
- He liked the group feeling of martial arts. Music plus group exercise pointed to dance. In 1999 he decided that dancing must be the way to keep exercising, and began facilitating classes, dancing to Punjabi music.
2004 to 2006: listening to the people who left
Hundreds of people came through the classes, but many did not return. Working in customer-focused roles, he began asking them why. The answer surprised him: at least 95% mainly wanted exercise. Costumes, shows and choreography did not matter to them. They said the class felt unstructured, like a social club, with a lot of waiting around.
His work in consumer protection taught him that if people feel disappointed because a service does not match its promise, the promise is wrong. He could not honestly promote the class as a fitness class.
2007: failing, and learning
To teach in fitness centres he took an Exercise to Music Level 2 certification. After years of teaching he expected to pass easily. He failed, and was given pages of things not to do. It was humbling and insightful, and it made him ask how many dance classes get fitness wrong. He retook it and passed.
Two cards, two industries
While working at a bank he saw that customers struggled to tell a debit card from a credit card. They look alike, but one uses your own money and the other is a loan from a company. The same idea applies to dance:
- Dance performing: the customer is ultimately the audience. Classes are rehearsals for a stage, a wedding, a dance floor or social media. The industry is entertainment.
- Dance fitness: the customer is you, and the aim is your physical health. You may look good doing it, as someone on a treadmill might, but that is not the point.
He later saw the same pattern at a technology company: two businesses can both make phones and still be in different industries, with different business models. Things that look the same can be built to do very different jobs.
2012: where the name came from
Around the London Olympics he was thinking about how to help people learn to exercise to Punjabi music. He noticed that the word is so often pronounced “bang-ra”, because of how it is written in English. It is closer to “bung-ra”. Spelling it the way it sounds gave the name Pungra.
Why Pungra is different from performance-led bhangra
Performance-led classes promote culture, traditional dress and views on social media, and may recruit people to perform on stage or in videos. Pungra’s promise is simple: you come to class, you do the class, you go home. As far as possible the class meets what a genuine fitness centre expects of a genuine fitness instructor, including insurance and music licensing.
2020: lockdown
During the pandemic the Pungra workout videos were used by thousands of people, who asked for more. Many also asked for live video-call classes. These had lower quality, had to be joined at a set time, and raised music licensing problems. The videos could be done whenever suited you. The lesson was that more work is needed to educate people about group exercise to Punjabi music.
What is next
- A certification programme to teach exercise to Punjabi music, aimed at 2027. The preference is schools and community centres first, with fitness centres as the longer-term goal, because fitness centres should have the higher standard.
- More active workout videos on the YouTube channel.
- A path for you: stay involved, then perhaps become an Activator, someone who encourages others in their community to become instructors, or an instructor yourself. Being an instructor is not about the money. The benefits are for your community, for society and for you.