How India's first Bungee Jumping facility came into being; Army man's daughter recounts the journey!

Among jumpers, the ratio is 70-30 for males and females. While 70% males sign up for it, it is 30% females,” says Niharika Nigam, the second-generation entrepreneur now running Jumpin Heights, as we talk about Bungee Jumping. “But out of the numbers, the majority of males back off, and fewer females,” she, who sits with the background of Nashik’s greenery, says. 

Background and scenery are also important for jumping enthusiasts. Currently, Jumpin Heights offers adventure activities like Bungee Jumping at Rishikesh with the backdrop of hills and a lake in Goa.

However, it remains shut during the monsoon season. “If the cord is too damp for a very long time, it can affect the rebound. If there is any slippage on the bridge at that height, there can be any kind of accidents. So, to be on the safe side, we remain shut for monsoons every year,” she says and perhaps, hence, not in one of these units overlooking the work. “Rishikesh shuts around mid-July and goes up to mid-September,” she adds. 

Nigam has jumped 14 times, and her journey began with Jumpin Heights, which was founded by her father, an army personnel, Captain Rahul Nigamin 1998. 

20 years and changing times 

Captain, who served in the Indian Army for 7 years, soon after his resignation, shifted his focus to businesses. However, patriotism was also kept alive through this channel, as his daughter says. “This project was purely born out of his sense of patriotism because he felt that in Indian landscapes, we do not throw the spotlight enough. 

The daughter believes that her father always felt India had beautiful landscapes, and he needed to create an environment where an adventure sport like this could thrive. "We do not trust Indian safety standards. Taking an example of a generic market, like paragliding, people are scared due to the accidents that have always been happening," she laments.

Raised in Nashik and on returning from the UK after completing MSc, she became the inaugural jumper. "None of the family members or friends wanted to do the bungee jump!" recounts Nigam, whose birthday fell on the day of the inauguration. "It was the first time I was doing it, and my mother had massive fears," she says, adding that "such is a very common Indian experience".

The initiative, however, motivated other guests to try it out as well, Nigam says, "The line did not stop after that, and we actually ended the day by 7." This marked the first permanent facility in India for Bungee Jumping.

Previously, as Niharika spoke, the scale was very low. “Bungee jumping used to happen on a very small scale once in a while. In malls, people would open up a crane, inflatable pipes and sort of thing.”

Since the industry itself was very nascent, it was difficult for people to believe in the safety system of the equipment. Hence, Niharika decided to jump in first to create trust among people, she recounts.

Jumpin Heights follows the Australian & New Zealand Standards Authority Guidelines for commercial operations in Bungee Jumping, where the 'Jump platforms' have been designed by a team from New Zealand and include technically qualified jump masters with years of experience operating in these sports in New Zealand and Switzerland.

Having enjoyed a monopoly for at least a decade, Nigam says that Jumpin Heights was never meant to be their bread and butter, but was started solely out of passion for adventure tourism in India and for the Indian consumer, rather than foreign tourists. Such a positioning helped in their growth.

The foreign-local confluence

Interestingly, however, Rishikesh, which attracts many foreign tourists, also finds something in common with the local trainers of Jumpin Heights - the language. "Our jump masters came in from New Zealand and, since the locals who were hired from the local village of Mohanchatti caught the accept of the trainers. They learned to speak directly under the jump masters on the bridge," Nigam laughs as she narrates the story, while also saying that it helped with the language problem.

Times have changed for adventure tourism in India, and so are things for the brand now. With the pace of social media indulgence, adventure tourism, as Nigam notes, has evolved from word of mouth to a completely different world. "It is a social-media world. Someone might not necessarily want to be indulging in something like this, but they still want to do this for 'content'; it comes down to what it shows them as," she says. "But every time an accident happens anywhere in the world, it puts the industry back 10 years," she further says.

Perhaps that is the reason Nigam denies planning the jump for people with disability. In recent times, many facilitators in India have begun paving the way to cater to this group. Nigam's stance is clear. "We have always taken a very conventional approach to safety, and I know there are people and there are organisations and facilities in the world, but we don't because it increases the risk of anything going wrong in the activity because of the jumper's disability, and we do not want to take those chances," she says. 

The gap that still exists

While the chances taken with Goa, when the Goa tourism department approached the brand, worked in their favour with profits in just four years of its inception, Nigam admits that carrying her father's legacy in the western state is also better, socially.

Adventure sports, which have largely been male-dominated, still carry that essence - for Nigam, less in Goa and more in Rishikesh. "I have never felt any gender-based bias in Goa, but while dealing with locals in Rishikesh, especially elders, I often have to wonder if they would take me 'seriously'," she says. "Aren't all sectors of entrepreneurship male-dominated? Women, in general, are just two generations into entrepreneurship because of gender roles that have always defined their daily lives."

Adding to the conversation, Niharika Nigam says, "If you are just two generations into an environment where men have been doing this since the time civilisation was born, I feel, we (women) are catching up fairly well," as she plans to travel to Goa soon to continue with the work.