India-based wellness app developer CureFit has secured approximately $145m in a funding round led by online food delivery service Zomato, according to Inc42, indicating the continual growth of the digital fitness and wellness space.
Singaporean state-owned investment firm Temasek filled out the round alongside Accel, South Park Commons, founder Mukesh Bansal and private investors Paras Sanghvi and Apurva Doshi at a $1.4bn valuation.
CureFit’s online platform allows users to book live fitness classes through a mobile app which also offers access to meditation and stress reduction tools, medical consultations, healthy meals and therapy sessions.
The round represents the latest point in an explosive trajectory for fitness apps and digital technology. The global fitness and wellness market, worth approximately $4.4 trillion globally last year, according to industry body the Global Wellness Institute, is seeing significant changes during the Covid 19 pandemic and related lockdowns.
Subsectors like fitness technology grew 29% between 2019 and 2020 to become a $49.5bn market, while healthy eating and nutrition maintained a 3.6% growth trajectory. The overall sector is expected to reach $7 trillion in size by 2025.
Consulting firm McKinsey’s Future of Wellness Survey in April this year stated the market for health and fitness products is growing between 5% and 10% annually. What used to be a somewhat niche remote fitness market gone mainstream after access to gyms was limited during the pandemic. Wearable activity trackers like Fitbit and home fitness systems such as Peloton and Tonal have made even group exercises more self-directed.
As countries emerge from the pandemic – new variants notwithstanding – much of the change looks set to stay, with downloads for fitness apps seeing an increase of 45.6% globally between Q1 and Q2 2020, according to consumer engagement platform Moengage and mobile app market intelligence provider Apptopia’s Global Mobile Consumer Trends report, which showed India as the region with the largest increase, amounting to 157%.
Zomato’s involvement is also notable as a potential harbinger of an increasingly busy intersection of digital health and food offerings.
The corporate agreed last month to sell its sports facility subsidiary, Fitso, to Curefit for $50m, investing another $50m in the company in return for a total stake of 6.4%. Fitso is not the only acquisition Curefit has made this year – it took over digital training platform developer Onyx in January and smart fitness equipment developer Tread in June.
CureFit had raised up to $75m in funding from Tata Digital, a subsidiary of conglomerate Tata Sons, in June this year, taking its total funding to at least $465m.
Consumer goods conglomerate Unilever’s corporate venturing unit, Unilever Ventures, had taken part in a $109m round for the company in March 2020 as an existing investor, at an $800m valuation. It was led by Temasek and also backed by Accel, Chiratae Ventures, GableHorn Investments Castle Investments, Epiq Capital, Pathiti Investment Trust and Ascent Capital.
