Zomato Ltd, the online food delivery and restaurant aggregation platform has bought a 6.4 percent stake in Curefit Healthcare Ltd via two separate transactions, making it the 36th billion-dollar startup of 2021, or and 77th overall unicorn in the Indian startup ecosystem, with a valuation of $1.5 billion.
Zomato’s $100 million investment with Curefit is divided into two parts: it sold sports facilities provider Fitso (owned by Jojo Technologies) to Curefit for $50 million while also making a second $50 million cash investment in the health and wellness business. Zomato’s move to offload Fitso to Curefit comes just months after the food-tech company spent Rs. 80 crore for the sports discovery platform in January 2021.
Zomato’s CEO Deepinder Goyal commented on the development in a company blog post, “The divestment versus shutdown debate starts and ends with two questions – Can we sell the business to someone for whom it is core, and can they realize disproportionate returns from what we have built? Is the divestment process worth the value that we will realize from the divestment? Fitso checked these boxes on divestment and we are in the process of selling Fitso to Curefit (Curefit Healthcare Pvt Ltd) for $50 million.”
Curefit is a complete health and wellness startup that includes fitness centers, online fitness programs, doctor consultations, therapy sessions, among other services. Mukesh Bansal, the founder of Myntra, and Ankit Nagori, the former Chief Business Officer of Flipkart, founded the startup in 2016. According to Crunchbase, a business analytics portal, the company has raised around $500 million. In June of this year, Curefit secured $75 million in funding from Tata Digital. Following the funding, Bansal became the president of Tata Digital.
In its quarterly report, Zomato highlighted the importance of the food tech focusing on its core operations, which include food ordering and delivery, dining-out, and the B2B supply chain vertical, Hyperpure. As a result, Zomato has discontinued all of its overseas operations. The startup is looking to strengthen D2C startups in cooperation with Shiprocket for a long-term play in auxiliary segments, similar to how it backed grocery startup Grofers.
CureFit has a physical presence across 21 cities around India. The company seeks to be operational across 50 cities by FY22 through a franchising model that combines a Cult Centre, a Cult Gym, or both.
The Indian healthcare market is predicted to more than quadruple, from $144 billion in 2019 to $638 billion by 2025. According to the report, CureFit is a market leader in the health tech area in India. The preventive healthcare sector, which includes wellness and fitness startups, is likely to transform at a CAGR of 13 percent between 2020 and 2025, reaching a market size of $170 billion by 2024.
