 "Amazon-backed Housejoy buys personal fitness startup Orobind")
Amazon-backed home services provider, Housejoy, has acquired Orobind, an at-home personal fitness startup, in an all-stock deal as it looks to grow its presence in the fast-growing health and wellness space.
“The depth of the domain which these guys (Orobind) bring to the table is what is attractive, especially in our effort to offer a differentiated experience for the lifestyle category that we want to go deep in," said Saran Chatterjee, CEO at Housejoy.
The acquisition of Orobind is the second such deal Housejoy is closing in less than a month's time, spurred by the $23 million funding round the company closed in December which was led by Amazon. While the exact terms of the deal have not been disclosed, most of the team at Orobind will join Housejoy.
Orobind, which currently operates exclusively in Bengaluru, has over 1,000 customers and 135 active fitness trainers on its platform. The acquisition will help Housejoy scale its own personal fitness business which it currently offers in 5 cities across India with 5,000 subscribers.
“Fitness and wellness is a highly lucrative category for most of the home services players primarily because of high repeat rates and high customer lifetime value but to leverage it one must have a highly differentiated product," said Satya Vyas, co-founder at Orobind, in a statement.
Rather than looking to expand its offerings to more cities in the country, Housejoy plans to consolidate its business and dwell deeper into each business vertical in each of the cities it's already present in. The company currently aggregates service providers for pest control, drivers, beauty, electronics repair, etc and is building its own presence in high-demand categories such as fitness, beauty and laundry.