Marico To Acquire Up To 22.5% Stake In Health And Wellness Platform Revofit

Mumbai-based Revofit (Revolutionary Fitness Private Limited) has received a strategic investment from Marico Ltd, a consumer product company operating in the beauty and wellness space, by way of a Shareholders’ Agreement and Share Subscription Agreement, announced on April 13, 2018.

As per the agreement, Marico will acquire up to 22.5% equity shares of the post-acquisition paid-up share capital of Revofit. Following the capital infusion, Revofit intends to increase its footprint in the wellness space, expand its cloud kitchen infrastructure and launch a slew of digital applications in the fitness and wellness space.

Commenting on the development, Sunjay Ghai, Co-founder and CEO, Revofit, said, “Marico’s deep domain knowledge in marketing, distribution and product development, coupled with our strengths in digital channels and focus on niche FMCG products for millennials, will enable cross pollination of ideas to create a robust high growth business.”

Founded by Serial entrepreneur Sunjay Ghai and incubated by AntFarm and the studio incubator, Revofit is a digital wellness curated platform dealing with FMCG products and cloud kitchens, delivering healthy food. With the help of IoT and AI, the platform also allows users to track and manage their nutritional intake, provides guided work-outs with celebrity fitness trainers and showcases easy to cook recipes from India’s leading Masterchefs.

Revofit also recently launched the first of its offline verticals Hello Green. Using nutrition as a part of preventive healthcare and flavours crafted by Vicky Ratnani, Hello Green is currently available in offline retail stores like Godrej Nature’s Basket, coworking space WeWork, on the Scootsy app.

Marking its second investment in a digital company, Saugata Gupta, MD and CEO, Marico said, “This complements Marico’s aspiration to participate in the nutraceuticals and wellness space. This win-win alliance of-fers a wider choice to consumers looking to incorporate wellness, fitness and nutrition into their daily lifestyle.”

Recently, as the health and wellness awareness is rising fast, many startups such as Curefit, Actor Miliun Suman-backed ONTHERUN, Wellness expert Deepak Chopra’s Jiyo have jumped into the space to encash the opportunity.

There is also a rising brigade of players like Stratfit, Mumbai-based Growfitter, healthcare app Fitnapp and health and fitness startup HealthifyMe, among others. Recently in April, Mumbai-based fitness discovery startup Fitternity raised $2 Mn.

Prior to that, Bengaluru-based health and fitness startup HealthifyMe raised $12 Mn in Series B funding round led by Sistema Asia Fund in February. Earlier in January 2018, Curefit also reported to raise $10 Mn in debt financing from HDFC Bank and Axis Bank.

At present, there are more than 120 fitness startups in the country that have together raised nearly $21.2 Mn in funding during FY ’17.

As per Inc42 Data Labs Tech Startup Funding Report 2017, healthtech witnessed 111 deals in 2017, making it the second most funded segment of 2017. Not just in terms of the number of deals, healthtech startups raised over $333 Mn in funding in 2017, which is three times the amount they raised in 2016.

With India becoming increasingly health conscious, the market is still ripe. The investment from Marico comes as a major push for Revofit which gains a lot more scalability with the funds.

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