Payal Kadakia

Empowering female entrepreneur and conference speaker for hire Payal Kadakia is the co-founder and CEO of ClassPass, an app helping users discover and attend workout classes in their area. Now one of the most popular workout apps in the market, Payal’s story of failed attempts and a diligent pursuit to bring her idea to life makes for great conversation at corporate conferences, women’s leadership events, industry forums and other business and special events.

Payal majored in operations research and economics at MIT and worked in corporate consulting for Bain & Company and Warner Music Group before deciding to follow her passion for exercise and dance. Payal started her own Indian dance troop at MIT and even opened her own dance studio after college but was dumbfounded when she went online to find a good dance class in NYC and could hardly find any information or reviews about local classes. It was then the idea for ClassPass was born.

In 2010, Payal co-founded Classivity which served as an online dance, exercise and workout class reservation service similar to OpenTable in the restaurant industry. Classivity fizzled simply because Payal and her team could not garner enough bookings so she refocused her efforts to launch Passport. This new service offered 10 chances for users to try a class at a new studio. This idea took off however customers began to find certain classes and studios they wanted to repeat so Payal was forced to rebrand again to allow for full user flexibility.

ClassPass was born in 2013 and offered users a $99 monthly package that gave them access to unlimited classes. ClassPass is now available in 34 cities across 4 countries and offers several differently priced packages scaled to fit the schedule and budget of various users. In 2015, Payal was named one of New York’s EY Entrepreneurs of the Year. Payal’s story is one of evolution, learning to adapt and letting your passion fuel your purpose in work and in life.

Would your organization like to hire Payal Kadakia to make a personal appearance at your next event? Contact Celebrity Speakers Bureau today to hire Payal Kadakia or another top keynote speaker to entertain and engage your audience at an upcoming corporate conference, speaker series, trade show or special event.