Tata Digital to invest $75 mn in Curefit; Bansal to join co as President

Tata Digital on Monday said it will invest USD 75 million (around Rs 550 crore) in fitness-focused Curefit Healthcare for an undisclosed stake.

Curefit's founder and chief executive Mukesh Bansal will join Tata Digital in an executive role as its president, an official statement said, adding will continue in his leadership role at Curefit as well.

It can be noted that Tata Digital has been sealing a slew of acquisitions for expanding its e-commerce play, which will have it compete with giants like Flipkart (with which Bansal was once associated after acquisition of Myntra), Amazon and also Reliance Retail.

The Tata Digital statement said Indian fitness and wellness market is growing at 20 per cent per annum and is expected to reach USD 12 billion by 2025, and Curefit will help Tata Digital expand into pro-active health management space.

Tata Digital Ltd -- a 100 per cent subsidiary of Tata Sons -- has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for investing of up to USD 75 million in CureFit Healthcare, subject to completion of diligence process and other approvals, the statement said.

"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.

Welcoming Bansal, Chandrasekaran said his deep consumer experience and an entrepreneurial mindset after having incubated and grown two very successful businesses and his expertise will bring immense value, he added.

Bansal said joining Tata Digital is an exciting new step for him and his team, and also a recognition of the value they have created with Curefit.

"Being part of Tata Digital will enable us to nationally scale up our offerings for our customers. Tata Digital has highly inspiring vision to create next generation consumer platform," Bansal said.

Sudhir Sethi, the chairman of Curefit's earliest backers Chirate Ventures said the partnership with Tata Digital will significantly accelerate Curefit's growth as a fitness and wellness leader, and open up access to large set of new consumer base.

"It is a strong validation of the category leadership that cure.fit has and help cure.fit grow rapidly as digital health takes off in a big way in next decade," Sethi added.