It would be easy to miss the Cult.fit gym in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar if one wasn’t explicitly looking for it, situated as it is on the second floor of a largely unoccupied building just off a busy main road. Inside, a large open area plays host to group workout sessions, with kettlebells and other weights stacked neatly on shelves. At the far end, gym-goers are working up a sweat, hammering away at a row of punching bags.
The object of our attention today, however, is a small kiosk just by the entrance. Its glass counters contain a range of healthy drinks and energy bars. These can be purchased on the spot, or through the Cure.fit app—a digital platform that ties together the various verticals of Cult’s parent organisation Curefit Healthcare. These verticals span across the gamut of wellness—there’s the gym chain (Cult.fit), food (Eat.fit), mental fitness (Mind.fit), and primary healthcare (Care.fit). To be sure, Curefit sees itself as a hydra of holistic health.
Since its inception in 2016, Curefit’s gym chain has primarily been the anchor of its business. Today, it has some 250 gyms spread across the country, drawing 100,000 users each day. Over 90% of its app users were on account of Cult.fit. Increasingly, however, its food business is starting to rival gyms in terms of importance. The kiosk at Lajpat Nagar stands testament to this. After each session—the centre runs two to three different classes every hour between 6AM and 10PM—tired athletes mill around the kiosk, hydrating or snacking.
That’s just within Curefit’s gyms.
The company also runs a network of cloud kitchens coupled with food delivery operations across the country. At present, its Eat.fit vertical operates 80 such cloud kitchens across 15 cities, all pumping out a range of healthy, yet homely food. Think vegetarian thalis (Eat.fit’s best-seller), tofu wraps, chicken curry and rotis—except without unhealthy ingredients like butter or refined flour. Every meal is also tagged with a calorie count, underscoring Eat.fit’s health-first ethos. Then there’s the smattering of quick-service restaurants (QSRs)—all in Curefit’s hometown of Bengaluru—that allows for a dine-in experience.
Through this multi-pronged approach, Eat.fit has grown by leaps and bounds over the past year. Despite Cult accounting for 90% of its app users, it only contributed to 60% of Curefit’s revenue in 2019. Eat.fit, on the other hand, saw its revenue contribution double—from 15% to 30%. And it isn’t plateauing anytime soon. This year, Curefit intends to double its order volumes. Several Curefit senior executives told The Ken that Eat.fit is growing faster than all the company’s other verticals, and will soon surpass gyms as the largest contributor to its revenue.
This success has allegedly helped Curefit close a fresh funding round from Singapore’s state investment fund Temasek in February, according to a highly placed source with knowledge of the deal. While it hasn’t been publicly announced, it reportedly gives Curefit an $800 million post-money valuation. Mukesh Bansal, Curefit’s co-founder, neither confirmed nor denied the deal.
