Ankit Nagori and Mukesh Bansal's preventive healthcare platform Curefit raises $15 mn

Former Flipkart executives Ankit Nagori and Mukesh Bansal's yet-to-launch online preventive healthcare platform Curefit has raised $15 million in a Series A round of funding from Accel Partners, IDG Ventures and Kalaari Capital.

The funds will be largely used for product development and enhancing the technology backbone of the venture, co-founder Nagori told Techcircle.

Vani Kola, managing director, Kalaari Capital, will join the board of Curefit.

"We believe that pro-active health management is a large space and requires the right mix of online and offfline expertise to master," said Subrata Mitra, partner at Accel Partners.

All three venture capital firms were early investors in Flipkart-backed fashion e-tailer Myntra. Accel Partners is also an investor in Flipkart.

Registered in May 2016 and to be launched in early 2017, Curefit, run by Curefit Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, is an online platform which will address the concept of preventive healthcare through a combination of engagement, coaching and delivery through a mix of online and offline channels.

"Over the last few years in India, healthcare is one industry which has not evolved at all. The current layers in the system don't see a need of technology because nobody thinks long-term. The players continue to use the model of face-to-face consultation, still following the primary, secondary and tertiary models of healthcare largely," Nagori said.

Nagori and Bansal had quit their positions as chief business officer and head of marketplace, respectively, at Flipkart in February, soon after an organisational restructure that put Binny Bansal as the man-in-charge of the e-commerce company. Initially, both of them had planned to pursue their own entrepreneurial ventures in the space of sports, health and fitness. However, sensing a synergy, they decided to start a joint venture.

While Bansal will be responsible for technology and product development at Curefit, Nagori will focus on operations and business strategy. Currently Curefit has seven to eight employees and plans to hire engineers and analysts to fine-tune the platform at the time of its launch.

While the startup is still to finalise the monetisation model, Curefit will essentially be a transaction-led platform for the services availed through it.

"It will clearly be a transaction-led platform. Whether it will be a commission, full-fledged fee or subscription, we are still figuring it out," said Nagori.

The yet-to-launch platform has no plans to diversify its offerings as the two co-founders feel that the market potential for preventive healthcare is huge and there are multiple aspects to it ranging across nutrition, diagnostics, fitness, mental health and meditation.

The platform will also have a curated marketplace model attached to it. While Curefit will not have doctors or health experts on its network, it will provide access through curated partnerships with players who address the concept of a healthy lifestyle through various forms.

"With our business model, which aims to provide a full-stack solution of advisory as well as fulfilment services, I don't think there is room for any other service in the near future. In the future there could be an opportunity of targeting people who are not well to get fit. Right now, the focus is on the ones who are trying to be fit," Nagori said.

Nagori added that healthcare spend in India was still a low 5% as opposed to 13% in developed economies and 18% in the US. "People go to a doctor only when they don't feel well. We are trying to change that by bringing down the curative spend by giving a healthier lifestyle option through preventive healthcare, which essentially boils down to eating right, right sleeping schedule, working out and being mentally fit. Our platform will aim to do that to consumers through creating ease of access to each of these," said Nagori.

Curefit joins a long list of healthtech and fitness startups that have raised funding in the recent past.

Earlier this month, CureJoy, an online community that connects users with alternative medicine experts, has raised $4.4 million in Series A, led by its existing investor Accel Partners India.

In May, Bangalore-based pediatric healthcare chain AddressHealth Solutions India Pvt. Ltd raised $1.5 million in a Series A funding round led by US-based Gray Matters Capital.

Integrated Child Health Records (iCHR), a digital platform that integrates child health data through cloud computing and mobility technology, had raised a seed round of funding from an unnamed Delhi-based angel investor in April. In March, AddoDoc Technologies Pvt. Ltd—that runs Babygogo, a mobile app that connects parents with child healthcare experts, had raised $300,000 in a seed funding round led by angel investor Rajul Garg. Lybrate, an online and mobile-based platform that connects patients to doctors, had raised $10 million from Tiger Global Management, Tata Sons chairman emeritus Ratan Tata and others in July last year.

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