CureFit targets revenue run rate of $100 million by March 2019

Bengaluru: Healthcare start-up CureFit Healthcare Pvt. Ltd plans to generate a revenue run rate of $100 million by March 2019, up from $20 million currently, as the company expands its fitness centres and food delivery business, and launches its own clinics, co-founders Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori said in an interview.

Run rate refers to annualized revenues earned in a particular month.

CureFit, which currently offers fitness classes at its Cult centres, food delivery subscriptions and meditation studios, will open clinics next month in Bengaluru under the care.fit brand and launch them in Hyderabad and the National Capital Region later this year. Each centre will have 8-10 general physicians and 4-5 nutritionists and health coaches.

“The whole objective of the platform is to deliver good health and that requires all these things like food, mental health, sleep, primary care. Today all these services are available separately and an enthusiastic user has to find all these offerings, evaluate, figure out the right plan—it’s too much effort. So we’re putting all these things together in one platform,” Bansal said.

To try and become a one-stop healthcare platform for customers, CureFit plans to launch machine-generated plans that will help customers manage diseases and improve fitness.

The company has created a healthcare database by trawling the web, buying data and analysing customer data on its own platform. Its data science head Ankit Gupta, a former Walmart Labs and Google engineer, is heading the effort to generate automated healthcare plans for customers from this database. This effort to offer healthcare plans is CureFit’s bet to tie all its services together.

“Our biggest initiative this year is goal management, where instead of getting users to only buy Cult memberships or food subscriptions, we’ll offer health goals. It could be on the healthy lifestyle side like weight loss, immunity boosting, etc. or lifestyle conditioning like managing diabetes, hypertension and such serious conditions. The platform will automatically create a health plan for you using AI (artificial intelligence), give it to you in a few seconds and offer fulfilment in case users want to buy it through our platform. It’s a unique offering—there’s nothing like this even in the US or China,” Bansal said.

CureFit will also add in-app features through which users can book appointments or chat with doctors and other healthcare professionals.

“For people who have serious conditions like diabetes, they will need more than just goal-management plans. For them, we’re offering one-on-one interactions with doctors, nutritionists and lifestyle coaches. So these professionals will be available over call, messaging, video and in person. Over the next three years, we’ll have at least 50 care.fit clinics,” Nagori said.

Since starting out in April 2016, CureFit has raised $55 million in equity and debt from Accel Partners, IDG Ventures, Kalaari Capital and others. The company has 50,000 customers in Bengaluru and NCR. It will launch in Hyderabad and Mumbai in the next financial year.

Indians, particularly in urban areas, are spending more on healthcare and improving fitness. A bunch of start-ups are trying to tap this growing demand for improved healthcare and fitness services. Among them, Practo Technologies Pvt. Ltd, CureFit and 1mg Technologies Pvt. Ltd have raised the most in funding, though all three have their own approaches.

Practo and 1mg are marketplaces that offer doctor discovery and online pharmacy services, respectively. CureFit offers fitness, food and healthcare services, all of which are directly provided by the company rather than third-party professionals.

The company started out by buying Cult, which was a niche fitness brand in Bengaluru with just three centres. It then launched its food delivery business and meditation studios last year. CureFit now has 30 Cult centres and five food kitchens, which contribute 70% and 25% of its revenues, respectively.

Bansal said CureFit’s food delivery business is expanding rapidly and will generate 40% of the company’s revenues by the end of the next financial year.