Fullife Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, which sells sports nutrition supplements under the brand Fast&Up, has secured funding for an undisclosed amount from actor Varun Dhawan, the company said in a statement on Friday.
The platform recently roped in Bollywood actor Varun Dhawan as Good Vibes Officer and also partnered with table tennis player Sharath Kamal Achanta and boxer Pooja Rani.
The investment comes right after Fast&Up raised its Series C funding of $22 million (around Rs 165 crore) from Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia (MSPEA).
Founded in 2015 by Vijayaraghavan Venugopal and Varun Khanna, Fast&Up provides nutrition supplements and multivitamin drinks. The six-year-old start-up has reached out to over 100 million people in a month. Last year, it launched 20 new products, that catapulted 100% growth in the previous financial year, Fast&Up said in the statement.
Fullife is the parent company of Aeronutrix Sports Products Private Limited, whose flagship brand ‘Fast&Up’ was brought to India under their active lifestyle segment.
“We are excited to welcome Varun to our Fast&Up family with his interest lying in the fitness sector...His alignment will help accelerate the brand foray into the Indian consumers who want to be active with intelligent nutrition,” said Venugopal, chief executive officer and co-founder, Fast&Up.
In similar deals, earlier this month, health and wellness platform Mosaic Wellness Pvt Ltd raised $1.25 million from Spring Marketing Capital. Similarly, last month, Mother Sparsh Baby Care Pvt Ltd, a direct-to-consumer (D2C) ayurvedic and natural personal care startup secured Rs 20 crore ($2.6 million) from hotel-to-cigarette conglomerate ITC Ltd.
Bollywood stars have taken to the startup world in a big way, making investments as an extension of their brand strategy.
In September this year, model and actor Malaika Arora launched Malaika Arora Ventures to invest in brands focused on health, wellness and lifestyle. Actors Alia Bhat and Katrina Kaif, who acquired Nykaa (FSN E-Commerce Ventures) shares in July 2020, are seeing a healthy uptick in their investments in the light of Nykaa’s bumper listing last week.