Mukesh Bansal, cofounder of online fashion retailer Myntra, and Ankit Nagori, former chief business officer at Flipkart, have joined hands to set up a healthcare, sports and fitness company.
The move comes barely six weeks after Bansal, former head honcho at Flipkart, and Nagori resigned from the country’s largest online retailer.
The new venture, being set up with an initial investment of $5 million, or about Rs 33 crore, will be based out of Bengaluru and will have two brands — one for healthcare and the other for sports and fitness.
“The idea with sports and fitness is how to inspire 100 million people to take on health and fitness. We are looking at everything from offline facilities to technology,” said Bansal who cofounded Myntra in 2007. He said sports and fitness brands such as Puma, Nike and Decathlon are their potential partners.
“With healthcare, there are multiple problems to be solved. We are still working on it,” Bansal said. The startup will primarily focus on aggregating the estimated $300-million healthcare market using technology. The duo is also looking at partnering with established players in the health segment.
Vidhya Shankar, partner alliance head of Nasscom’s 10,000 Startups programme, said their experience may help Bansal and Nagori to establish their new venture.
“Healthcare is a niche segment where multiple startups are bringing in different perspectives. Shifting consumer behaviour in this area will take time similar to the retail space. Since they are known names and have entrepreneurial experience, it will be easier for them to raise money, build a team and gain trust,” Shankar said.
While they also have plans to expand into education and financial services sector, there isn’t enough clarity on the strategy yet.
“Since we are at a very early stage, we are not looking at any external funding. But my estimate is that this is one sector which will get investors excited,” said Nagori, who had a six-year stint at Flipkart.
Last month, both Nagori and Bansal decided to quit Flipkart just weeks after a top-level restructuring that resulted in Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal’s elevation as the CEO and Sachin Bansal to group chairman.
In 2008, Nagori had started Youthpad.com, a social marketing platform for the youngsters, which got shut down in 2010. “I think of entrepreneurship as an ‘unfinished agenda’ that we will be embarking on through this startup,” he said.
Bansal joined Flipkart after it acquired his fashion portal Myntra for an estimated $375 million in May 2014. A computer science graduate from the IIT-Kanpur batch of 1997, Bansal started off as a software engineer, working first for major consulting firm Deloitte and then a series of startups.
Source: The Economic Times
Image Courtesy : livemint
