Mukesh Bansal, the Co-Founder of fashion portal Myntra, has snagged funding for his new startup — CureFit — from a group of marque investors, who backed his maiden venture and have now stepped up to close one of the largest seed investment rounds in the Indian startup sector this year.
Accel Partners, IDG Ventures India and Kalaari Capital have participated in the $15-million round, which includes an investment of $3 million by Bansal himself. The deal values the health and wellness startup at about $50 million.
Bansal, who led Flipkart’s commerce platform until he quit India’s largest online retailer in March, has teamed up with former colleague Ankit Nagori to set up CureFit, which will open for business in early 2017.
“We aim to build an innovative product, which will help consumers manage their health proactively with the use of technology and data,” said Bansal, who worked at four startups in the Silicon Valley before setting up Myntra in 2007. Bansal, a computer science engineer from IIT-Kanpur, will lead the product and technology development functions while Nagori will take charge of business development and operations.
CureFit, which is envisaged as a platform, expects to offer products and solutions for preventive and curative healthcare that will combine engagement, coaching and delivery through a mix of online and offline channels.
“(It) is an end-to-end solution that will enable users to take full control of their health, improve quality of life and reduce longterm healthcare costs,” said Nagori, who was the chief business officer at Flipkart, until he quit the Bengaluru-based company in February 2016.
The idea behind CureFit is that people, who are fit, should not have to fork out more for healthcare needs. Instead the startup aims to award points for every positive fitness routine undertaken by the customer, which can then be exchanged for actual medical spends, if any.
The company is in talks with healthcare service providers to offset such points against medical bills, according to people familiar with the developments at the fledgling venture.
“We believe that pro-active health management is a large space that requires the right mix of online and offline expertise to master, we believe this team can effectively put (this) together,” said Subrata Mitra, partner, Accel Partners. Vani Kola, the Managing Director of Kalaari Capital, will join the board of the company after this round of funding.
The startup, which has a team of about ten employees, expects to hire about 35-40 people by the end of this year.
Source: The Economic Times
Image Courtesy: ndtv.com
