Tata Digital to invest up to $75 mn in fitness startup CureFit

Appoints cofounder Mukesh Bansal as President

Continuing its foray into the digital consumer ecosystem, Tata Digital, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Tata Sons, has signed a deal for investing of up to $75 million in CureFit Healthcare. This is subject to completion of diligence process and other approvals.

As part of the deal, CureFit Founder & CEO Mukesh Bansal will join Tata Digital in an executive role as President. He will continue in his leadership role at CureFit.

“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,” said N Chandrasekaran, Chairman, Tata Sons. 

“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,” he added. 

Bansal cofounded Myntra in 2007 which was acquired by e-commerce giant Flipkart in 2014 in a Rs 2,000 crore deal. He later went on to rollout CureFit along with cofounder 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 & CEO of CureFit.

Before this, CureFit had 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 in October last year as Bansal and Nagori realised that the unit economics of food and gyms are different. Nagori now runs the food portfolio while Bansal is at the helm of 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 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 the next decade,” said Sudhir Sethi, Chairman Chirate Ventures from CureFit board.

The Indian fitness and wellness market is growing at 20 per cent 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, said the salt-to-software conglomerate.

Tata Sons subsidiary Tata Digital is raising Rs 5,000 crore through a commercial paper. Analysts tracking the group said the company would need access to capital as it prepares its digital development and operational expenses. Last month in a bid to fuel its strategy to build a digital consumer ecosystem, the conglomerate had acquired a majority stake in egrocery player BigBasket at a valuation of $2 billion. According to reports, it has also signed a deal to acquire a 65 per cent stake in e-pharma player 1mg at a valuation of around Rs 1,200 crore.