India's Tata Digital makes healthcare, fitness investments

Tata Digital, which launched in 2019 with a view to growing consumer-centric businesses across verticals including retail, travel, and financial services, also recently bought a majority stake in BigBasket, an online grocer backed by numerous PE players.

The firm said in a statement that it had taken a majority interest in 1mg as part of a vision to create “a digital ecosystem that addresses consumer needs across categories in a unified manner.”

1mg claims to be India’s largest digital health platform, with over 40 million monthly unique users and 500 million monthly page views. It sells medicines and health and wellness products as well as providing online consultations and diagnostic services. The company has three diagnostic labs, a supply chain covering 20,000 postal codes, and a wholesale operation.

Launched in 2013 as a division of health products vendor Healthkart, and spun out in 2015, 1mg has raised approximately $170 million in private funding, AVCJ Research’s records show. Most recently, the International Finance Corporation and Switzerland-based family office Corisol Holdings led a $70 million Series D in 2019 at a valuation of around $200 million.

Other investors include Sequoia Capital India, Maverick Ventures, HBM Healthcare Investments, Kae Capital, Omidyar Network, Redwood Global Healthcare Fund, and Korea Omega Investment.

Telemedicine businesses have boomed during the lockdowns and social distancing measures imposed in response to COVID-19. Tata estimates that the market is worth around $1 billion and will grow – over an unspecified period – at a compound annual rate of approximately 50%.

Several similar businesses have received VC funding, among them drug marketplace Netmeds, which was acquired last year by Reliance Retail Ventures, a company associated with Jio Platforms.

CureFit also offers telemedicine services, but it primarily sells gym memberships and online personal training packages and manages bookings for meditation, yoga, and therapy sessions. In addition, there are meal planning and food delivery services and sportswear retail. Tata said India’s fitness and wellness market is growing at 20% per year and is expected to be worth $12 billion by 2025.

CureFit has raised around $470 million to date. The second tranche of its Series D closed on $112.4 million last year, led by Temasek Holdings and with participation from GableHorn Investments, Ascent Capital, Accel Partners, Chiratae Ventures, and Unilever Corporate Ventures. The first tranche closed on $120 million in 2019, led by Accel, Kalaari Capital, Chiratae, and Oaktree Capital.

“It is a strong validation of the category leadership that CureFit has and will help CureFit grow rapidly as digital health takes off in a big way in the next decade,” said Sudhir Sethi, chairman of Chiratae and a CureFit board member, in a separate statement.

As part of the latest deal, Mukesh Bansal, who co-founded CureFit in 2016 and continues to serve as CEO, will join Tata Digital in an executive role as president. Bansal previously founded fashion e-commerce platform Myntra, and Tata Digital said in a separate statement that it wanted to leverage his “deep consumer experience and an entrepreneurial mindset.”

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Expansion
• Technology
• Consumer
• Healthcare
• India
• TMT
• Accel Partners
• Chiratae Ventures
• Kalaari Capital
• Growth capital
• Sequoia Capital
• Omidyar Network
• IFC