Tata Digital is all set to invest up to $75 million in health and fitness startup CureFit. Tata Digital, a 100 percent subsidiary of Tata Sons, has signed the deal. As part of the deal, CureFit’s founder and chief executive, Mukesh Bansal, will take charge as president of Tata Digital and continue his leadership role at CureFit.
The company announced that an MoU between the two companies had been inked, and the proposed investment would be cleared subject to completion of the diligence process and other approvals. Earlier CureFit had raised over $400 million and was valued at around $800 million. Some of the names backing the Bengaluru-based startup include Chiratae Ventures, Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, and Oaktree Capital.
The partnership aligns with Tata’s values & helps Curefit gain mileage
“The CureFit partnership with its industry-leading platform in fitness and wellness aligns very well with our overall healthcare proposition where fitness is increasingly becoming an integral part of a consumers’ life,” Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran said.
Chandrasekaran also said he was delighted to have Mukesh Bansal as a part of the key leadership team of Tata Digital. According to Bansal, being part of Tata Digital will enable CureFit to “nationally scale up our offerings for our customers.”
Bansal had cofounded Myntra in 2007, which e-commerce giant Flipkart acquired in 2014 in a Rs 2,000 crore deal. He then went on to rollout CureFit along with co-founder Ankit Nagori in 2016.
“Being part of Tata Digital will enable us to nationally scale up our offerings for our customers. It has a highly inspiring vision to create the next generation consumer platform, and I am very excited to be part of the Tata Digital team that is shaping this vision,” said Bansal, co-founder, and CEO of CureFit.
The company carved out a separate healthy and clean food business, EatFit, in October last year as Bansal and Nagori realized that the unit economics of food and gyms are different. Nagori now leads the food portfolio while Bansal heads the fitness business.
“Tata digital partnership will significantly accelerate CureFit’s growth as a fitness & wellness leader, and it will open up access to a large set of the new consumer base. It is a strong validation of the category leadership that CureFit has and helps CureFit grow rapidly as digital health takes off in a big way in the next decade,” said Sudhir Sethi, Chairman Chirate Ventures from CureFit board.
The Indian fitness and wellness market is growing at 20 percent per annum and is expected to reach $12 billion by 2025. CureFit, which is on a mission to build India’s largest fitness network, had earlier in February acquired Fitternity, forming a collective user base of 3 million users and over 5,000 fitness centers spread across the top 20 cities in India.
Tata Sons subsidiary Tata Digital is raising Rs 5,000 crore through commercial paper. Last month in a bid to fuel its strategy to build a digital consumer ecosystem, the conglomerate had acquired a majority stake in e-grocery player BigBasket at a valuation of $2 billion. According to reports, it has also signed a deal to acquire a 65 percent stake in e-pharma player 1mg at a valuation of around Rs 1,200 crore.
