Health and fitness startup MobieFit, co-founded by actress, activist and fitness advocate Gul Panag, has raised $1.35 million (Rs 8.7 Crore) in a pre-Series A funding round led by Dubai-based fund NB Ventures with co-investment from healthcare data management company MediAssist, a company statement said.
Owned and operated by MobieFit Technologies Pvt. Ltd, the startup was established in 2015 by Gourav Jaswal, Shantanu Raghav, Sushant Chavan, Pravar Peri, and actress Panag.
The company operates two health-related products, Mobiefit Run and Mobiefit Body, offering various fitness-related services including running tips and guidance, exercise routines, and health tips.
"With the launch of its paid programmes six months ago, Mobiefit became the first fitness app from India to offer training programmes via in-app subscriptions" Panag said.
The company had previously raised $1 million from MediAssist and other angel investors including Siddharth Parekh, founder of private equity firm Paragon Partners and Mahesh Murthy of SeedFund.
Mobiefit has crossed 750,000 downloads for Mobiefit Run and Mobiefit Body.
The startup was incubated at Goa-based Prototyze, which has incubated a clutch of ventures that have collectively raised over $12 million in investment. These include digital lending company Seynse, Internet of Things and software-as-a-service transportation technology company TempoGO, and mobile-based SaaS training platform HandyTrain.
NB Ventures is a $50-million Dubai-based fund. Last week, it invested in TempoGO and in April this year, it invested in home tutor provider Qriyo. Its other India investments include logistics startup LetsTransport and fitness app HealthifyMe.
MediAssist is a healthcare data management company which claims to be processing insurance claims of over 25 million Indians and provides wellness services to over 5,500 companies.
Healthy growth
The health and fitness space has seen several deals of late. For instance, Mumbai-based health and fitness discovery platform Growfitter Pvt. Ltd, which runs Growfitter.com, secured $600,000 (Rs 3.9 crore) in a pre-Series A round from venture capital firm SQue Capital in June this year.
In March, Gurgaon-based Jogo Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which runs health and fitness app Fitso, raised $200,000 from angel investors, including the former president of operations at Flipkart Sujeet Kumar, Intelenet Global Services CEO Bhupender Singh, and PolicyBazaar CEO Yashish Dhaiya.
In January, mobile marketplace for gym memberships, Fitnapp, raised pre-Series A funding from Noida-based real estate developer SD Group.
The same month had seen Fitpass securing $1 million in seed funding from Mumbai Angels, and a clutch of angel investors from Delhi and Bengaluru.