Falling in line with previous reports, CureFit has today announced that it has added a fresh $3 million to its coffers. This investment round saw participation from Ratan Tata’s UC RNT Fund (a fund set up in partnership between Tata and the University of California Investments) and a cohort of Silicon Valley angels.
The angels who’ve pumped capital into this early-stage healthcare and fitness startup include Gokul Rajaram, product engineering chief at the Jack Dorsey’s payments firm Square; Aditya Agarwal, CTO at cloud file storage venture Dropbox; Shishir Mehrotra, the founder of TBD and Facebook’s first female engineer, Ruchi Sanghvi.
Founded back in May 2016, this startup is the brainchild of former Myntra co-founder and Flipkart executives — Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori respectively. The investment comes on the heels of the platform’s official debut, which has happened nearly a year after it being in stealth mode. It is employing a mix of online and offline channels to market its healthcare and wellness initiatives.
Talking about the official launch, Bansal in a statement said,
We are offering an integrated solution to users in three areas – fitness, food and mental health. We started off with our fitness offering of Cult which now has 5,000 paid subscribers.
Until date, the company has picked up close to $20 million from marquee investors such as Kalaari Capital, Accel Partners, and IDG Ventures. This investment pool includes the founder’s $5 million bootstrapped money and $15 million nabbed in its Series A funding round secured just after its incorporation. It plans on adding additional capital as it looks towards expansion, with participation from Hrithik Roshan — owner of lifestyle brand HRX.
After experimenting in the fashion e-commerce space with Myntra, CureFit is Mukesh Bansal’s second entrepreneurial venture. This is aimed at building a state-of-the-art fitness and wellness solution, which focuses on wholesome eating and fitness simultaneously. It currently operates four services — CureFit Logistics, New World Inventions, CureFit Healthcare, and Curefoods.
The CureFit app, which is now live both on Android and iOS, now provides you access to three prominent options. In the bottom bar, you have access to your daily activities (step count, sleep pattern, etc.) under Today, three primary sections — eat.fit, cult.fit and mind.fit — under Explore and a Me tab for access to support and orders.
The eat.fit section includes meal plans (prepared most likely by Kristys Kitchen, one of its most recent acquisitions and delivered by hyperlocal logistics firm Opinio) for professionals in the Bengaluru region. It currently plans on offering its services in Bengaluru for a complete year, before expanding its presence to other cities in the nation. The one-time meal costs as low as ₹200, with 5-day packs starting at ₹900.
The Cult.fit section offers you different workout programs, such as Zumba classes, spin, MMA and an HRX Workout as well. You can currently book two free, introductory sessions with unlimited plans starting at ₹1,500. The mind.fit section of the app focuses on the mental well-being of an individual, which is necessary for professionals in Bengaluru. These sessions are available for free.
To build its unique healthcare platform, CureFit invested about $3 million in acquiring a controlling stake in Bengaluru-based fitness company Cult. However, Cult – The Workout Station continues to operate as an independent brand. In addition, the company has also acquired three other startups, ranging from health care to the mental well-being space.
