Food delivery and restaurant aggregation platform Zomato Ltd has acquired a 6.4% stake in Curefit Healthcare Ltd via twin deals, making it the 36th billion-dollar company, or unicorn, at $1.5 billion.
Zomato’s $100 million deal with Curefit is two-fold -- it sold sports facilities provider Fitso ( operated by Jojo Technologies) to Curefit for $50 million while also making a separate $50 million cash investment in the health and wellness business.
Zomato's decision to divest Fitso to Curefit comes just months after the foodtech major acquired the sports discovery platform for Rs 80 crore in January 2021.
"The divestment versus shutdown debate starts and ends with two questions – Can we sell the business to someone for whom it is core, and can they realise disproportionate returns from what we have built? Is the divestment process worth the value that we will realise from the divestment? Fitso checked these boxes on divestment and we are in the process of selling Fitso to Curefit (Curefit Healthcare Pvt Ltd) for $50 million," said Goyal in a company blog on Wednesday.
Zomato now plans to explore synergies with Curefit, as it looks to ramp up its health food play.
"In order to cultivate a great long-term partnership with Curefit, we are also investing cash in Curefit. Net $50 million cash investment plus value of the Fitso business (worth $50 million) will give us a cumulative shareholding worth $100 million in Curefit (6.4% shareholding in Curefit). This will help us potentially explore cross-selling benefits between Zomato and Curefit, as we see food and health becoming the same side of the coin in the long term," said Goyal.
Zomato’s investment into Curefit comes five months after Tata Digital picked up a minority stake in the Mukesh Bansal led business.
CureFit Healthcare was founded in 2016 by Bansal, who earlier co-founded fashion ecommerce platform Myntra (which was acquired by Flipkart) and former Flipkart executive Ankit Nagori.
The startup was formed to cater to the preventive healthcare market through a combination of engagement, coaching and delivery, using both online and offline channels.
Last October, Ankit Nagori swapped his equity in Cure Fit for a larger ownership in CureFoods, which runs its cloud kitchen business Eat.Fit, a company statement said at that time.
In 2020, Curefit Healthcare raised Rs 832 crore in a funding round led by Singapore government backed Temasek and other investors such as GableHorn Investments and Ascent Capital. Prior to this, the startup had raised $120 million (Rs 832.6 crore) in its Series D round of funding via equity and debt in 2019. The round was led by existing investors Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India), Accel, Kalaari Capital and Oaktree Capital, Cure Fit said in a statement at the time.
Meanwhile, Fitso is not Curefit’s first acquisition. In February, it acquired gym aggregator Fitternity for an undisclosed sum. In January, it acquired a San Francisco based fitness company Onyx, to improve its computer vision technology for its at-home fitness product.
It has previously acquired Bengaluru-based a1000yoga and integrated mental wellness platform Seraniti.
