CureFit to foray into primary health care, launch first centre in Bengaluru

Two-year-old start-up plans to offer preventive solutions through new centres

CureFit, a health tech and fitness start-up promoted by Myntra co-founder Mukesh Bansal and former Flipkart top executive Ankit Nagori, is targeting the primary health care space.

CureFit will launch its first Care.fit centre in Bengaluru on April 1, followed by a pan-India launch.

The two-year old start-up is backed by investors, including Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, IDG Ventures and UC-RNT (a joint investment vehicle sponsored by Ratan Tata and the University of California).

The focus of Care.fit, however, will not be to compete with clinics and hospital chains, but to offer preventive health care solutions through its in-house physicians, using technologies such as Big Data and analytics and telemedicine.

“At Care.fit, we will assign doctors who will prescribe lifestyle measures to keep one healthy in the long run,” said Bansal.

CureFit already has three verticals — Cult.fit, a membership-oriented workout vertical that caters to consumers through its brick-and-mortar centres; Eat.fit, a subscription-based, nutritive food delivery vertical; and Mind.fit, an app-based mental wellness programme focussed on stress prevention techniques. Care.fit will be the fourth.

“It is basically a family doctor concept, where there will be a personal doctor who can be reached in-person, over the phone or even video chat,” said Nagori, a fitness freak himself.

Being backed by data provided from CureFit, Care.fit will be a digital product. The use of medicines at these clinics will be limited, Nagori said. “It will be more about working out, eating healthy and meditating.”

The one-stop fitness platform aims at launching 50 Care.fit centres in the next five years, apart from 500 Cult.fit centres, 100 Mind.fit units and over 100 health kitchens. CureFit currently runs 30 Cult units in Bengaluru and six in the National Capital Region (NCR). It has five Mind.fit centres and five Eat.fit kitchens in Bengaluru.

The two-year old CureFit has so far raised $45 million, including $10 million in debt financing from HDFC Bank and Axis Bank. The cash was being mostly invested to popularise the brand and build the technology, the founders said.

Nagori said the company does not need to go for another round of funding this year given that Cult.fit is already Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) positive. “We are already seeing an Ebitda level of around 20 per cent for Cult.fit. Besides, the Mind.fit centres will break even in the next two-three months.”

We may raise $20-25 million in debt funding in 2018-19, but for now we are adequately funded, said Nagori. “All our centres are built in a profit-centric manner. The health food platform will turn Ebitda profitable by the second half of the year,” he added.