Mukesh Bansal, Ankit Nagori join hands to launch startup

Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori, who quit e-commerce giant Flipkart last month, are pooling in $5 million to launch a healthcare, sports and fitness venture.

Nagori told VCCircle the new Bengaluru-based venture will launch two brands—one for the sports and fitness business and the other for healthcare.

Nagori didn't give any details but several media reports reported that the new venture will launch an app in coming months and that the duo have started hiring engineers for the startup. The reports also said that the duo may look at new segments such as financial services and education in the future.

Bansal, who was head of marketplace and a board member at Flipkart, and chief business officer Ankit Nagori had decided to leave the e-commerce firm in February, barely a month after a top-level reshuffle that led to a change in the roles of the company's two founders.

Nagori, who had joined Flipkart six years ago, already had plans to start his own sports venture. At the time of his departure, a post on Flipkart's website had said that the company's founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal would back his new venture.

An IIT-Kanpur graduate, Mukesh started his career with Deloitte Consulting in 1997 and worked with and founded a bunch of startups in Silicon Valley before moving to Bangalore in 2007 to start fashion e-tailer Myntra with Ashutosh Lawania. After Myntra became part of Flipkart, he joined the board of Flipkart and headed its commerce platform.

The duo's new startup will join a bunch of other players in the health-tech segment, which has attracted a lot of investor interest in the past couple of years. Practo Technologies Pvt Ltd, a web-based clinic management software developer which derives a major portion of its business from primary clinics, and Fitternity, an online fitness discovery platform, are some of the players in the segment.