BENGALURU: Tata Digital Ltd, a wholly owned Tata Group subsidiary, on Monday announced it has agreed to invest up to $75 million in fitness startup CureFit.
Mukesh Bansal, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of CureFit Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, will continue as CEO and also take up an executive role at Tata Digital as president.
Tata Digital’s latest investment follows its continuing investments and acquisitions in the digital space, even as the Tata Group works on a super app for consumers.
“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 consumer’s life. We are delighted to have Mukesh Bansal as a part of the key leadership team of Tata Digital. With his deep consumer experience and an entrepreneurial mindset of having incubated and grown two very successful businesses, his expertise will bring immense value to us,” said N. Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons.
Bansal co-founded Myntra in 2007, which was acquired by e-commerce giant Flipkart in 2014 in a Rs 20 billion deal. He later went on to roll out CureFit along with cofounder Ankit Nagori in 2016.
CureFit had last raised over $400 million and was valued at around $800 million, according to reports. Some of the marquee names backing the Bengaluru-based startup include Chiratae Ventures, Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital and Oaktree Capital. The company has carved out a separate healthy and clean food business EatFit. Nagori now runs the food portfolio while Bansal is at the helm of the fitness business.
“Joining Tata Digital is a recognition of the value we have created with CureFit for fitness enthusiasts in India. Being part of Tata Digital will enable us to nationally scale up our offerings for our customers. Tata Digital 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.
In May, Tata Digital announced the purchase of a majority stake in online grocer BigBasket.
Tata Digital is said to be working on a super app to bring all its consumer businesses under one platform. It looks to offer digital payments, financial products, e-commerce, and e-grocery services on this new super app, rivalling the likes of Amazon India, RIL, and Walmart-owned Flipkart.
“The partnership with Tata Digital will significantly accelerate CureFit’s growth as a fitness and wellness leader and will open up access to a large new consumer base. It is a strong validation of the category leadership that CureFit has and help it grow rapidly as digital health takes off in a big way in the next decade,” said Sudhir Sethi, chairman, Chiratae Ventures, an early backer of CureFit.
The Indian fitness and wellness market is growing at 20% 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 centres spread across top 20 cities in India. The startup with its range of fitness and wellness offerings, will help Tata Digital expand into pro-active health management space, the salt-to-software conglomerate declared of the acquisition.
