Tata Digital, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons, will invest up to $75 million in CureFit Healthcare Private Limited, the company announced on June 7.
As part of the agreement, CureFit founder and chief executive officer Mukesh Bansal will join Tata Digital in an executive role as president. In addition, Bansal will continue in his leadership role at CureFit.
The statement issued by Tata Digital noted that the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two companies has been inked, and the proposed investment would be cleared "subject to completion of diligence process and other approvals".
"The CureFit partnership with its industry leading platform in fitness and wellness aligns very well with our overall healthcare proposition where fitness is increasingly becoming an integral part of a consumers’ life," Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran said.
"We are delighted to have Mukesh Bansal as a part of the key leadership team of Tata Digital. With his deep consumer experience and an entrepreneurial mindset of having incubated and grown two very successful businesses, his expertise will bring immense value to us," he added.
At the same time, Bansal, who had earlier founded Myntra, which he sold to Flipkart before starting up CureFit, said, "Being part of Tata Digital will enable us to nationally scale up our offerings for our customers."
"Tata Digital has highly inspiring vision to create next generation consumer platform and I am very excited to be part of Tata Digital team that is shaping this vision," he added.
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CureFit is, notably, among India’s leading online fitness platform. According to Tata Digital, the Indian fitness and wellness market is growing annually at approximately 20 percent and is expected to reach around $12 billion by 2025.
"CureFit is uniquely positioned to capture a large share leveraging its comprehensive solution and differentiated tech platform," the press release stated, adding that the company "will help Tata Digital expand into pro-active health management space".
Traditionally, Indian corporate houses have stayed away from investing or taking bold bets in valuation-driven, high loss making businesses. Startups have thus had to rely on foreign investors and funds for a majority of their funding. Investors say Tata's move may set the trend for Indian conglomerates to bet on new age business models.
The Tata Group has huge ambitions for the e-commerce space, which is currently dominated by Amazon, Walmart-owned Flipkart, with Reliance Industries also expanding aggressively through JioMart.
The conglomerate is building a super app under Tata Digital, with plans to add categories such as groceries, health, education, entertainment, electronics, fashion, travel, beauty and lifestyle. It also plans to leverage the strength of group companies such as Titan, Voltas, Trent, Tata Consumer Products, Tata Motors, Vistara, Tata AIG, Tata Capital and Taj Hotels, offering users an array of services in one app.
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