As a student, Aarti Pandey competed and won several zonal and national-level folk dance events. But because dance wasn’t considered a burgeoning career at the time, she moved on to pursue an MBA and work in the corporate world for years. "Dance helped me overcome depression and made me realise it was my calling," she says.

She started teaching Latin dance styles at first, but realised over time that most dance fitness styles — Zumba, pilates or piloxing — were western dance forms. "These are styles that we cannot call our own. This pushed me to recall how folk dance helped me enjoy the moves while building stamina and muscle. I thought, ‘Why not merge our own traditional forms with fitness?’" she recalls.