CureFit acquires majority stake in The Tribe in bid to expand offline footprint

Bengaluru: Healthcare and fitness start-up CureFit (Healthcare Pvt. Ltd), on Tuesday said it acquired a majority stake in fitness centre chain The Tribe, in a bid to expand its offline footprint.

The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal. Shwetambari Shetty, co-founder of The Tribe fitness centres, will join CureFit’s management team.

CureFit had bought Bengaluru-based fitness centre brand Cult for $3 million last August.

Mint reported on 31 January that the start-up is also in talks to acquire a stake in mental wellness services provider Seraniti.

ALSO READ | CureFit in talks to buy healthcare start-ups, including Seraniti Mental Health

The company said on Tuesday it has closed the deal to buy Seraniti.

The addition of the three centres run by The Tribe will bring Curefit’s total centres to nine by March. It plans to open at least 20 centres in the city by the end of the year.

CureFit will concentrate on Bengaluru with its fitness centres, which operate without using traditional gym equipment, and also introduce services in mental wellness, health food and fitness through a mobile app it plans to launch later this year.

“We have invested in The Tribe because it follows a similar fitness philosophy of group training by using various no-machine formats. This investment will increase our reach in the key sought-after locations in South Bangalore that will allow a wider access to members and non-members,” CureFit co-founder Ankit Nagori said.

Nagori and Mukesh Bansal, CureFit’s other founder, were two of the senior-most executives at Flipkart before they resigned in February last year.

Curefit, which has 45 employees, has so far raised as much as $20 million, with $5 million pooled in by the founders themselves and a Series A round from venture capital (VC) firms Kalaari Capital, Accel Partners and IDG Ventures.

About 117 fitness start-ups, which are marketplaces for discovery and booking of fitness centres, coaches and membership pass for various gyms and fitness classes, have been founded since 2015 in India, according to November data from start-up tracker Tracxn.

Funds raised by some of these start-ups amount to $16 million in 2015, and $21.2 million in 2016.