Welcome to our First issue of Focus series at the duologue. The reading time to finish this one is around 7 mins.
The Duologue is an concerted effort by Vivek and Bheem to make sense with a unique lens. Now, on to the post!
Hey Bheem,
Quite a vague title to begin with but certainly apt for what we are focusing for this post. Cure.fit is a full stack health services platform, as it says. An excerpt from the-ken article profiling the startup back in 2017 [1].
A full stack health platform, with a mix of services and products sold through an app, and a full range branding with .fit, Bansal has the stacks sorted: Offline gyms for fitness in Cult.fit; meditation and yoga centres in Mind.fit; and hyperlocal health-food service in Eat.fit. And by early 2018, it even wants to get into primary healthcare, with Care.fit centres.
In 2020, they have hit almost all the aspects that they had laid back in 2017. With the recent fund raise of 832 crores, they are not just looking to double down [2]. Also, they are focusing on launching other verticals as such.
The fresh funding comes at a time when Cure.fit has been expanding into verticals such as grocery (via Whole.fit) and healthcare and has also been foraying into overseas markets. According to Entrackr’s sources, the firm has been planning to add several services including dental and skincare under Care.fit.
Prior to Whole.fit they launched a clothes line. So, for a quick recap to check whether you are with me or not.
Cure.fit has 6 verticals as of this date and is planning to expand into few others as well:
1. Cult.fit
2. Mind.fit
3. Eat.fit
4. Whole.fit
5. Cult - Clothes Line
6. Care.fit - Mental Health ,Dental, Skin and Hair
(The one in the *italics* is yet to be launched.)
A recent look at their financials by entrackr found that they still rake in a large share of their revenue from offering Health and Fitness services [3]
Almost 70% of operating revenues — Rs 124.5 crore — were generated by offering fitness and healthcare services while the sale of food through its cloud kitchens added another Rs 55.2 in FY19. These cloud kitchen sales grew 10.2X as compared to sales of Rs 5.4 crore in FY18.
Where Eat.fit lacks in revenue, it makes up in customer numbers. [4]
While Cult contributes a large chunk of overall revenue for Cure.Fit by virtue of its large ticket size, it is food that really brings in the numbers. Eat.Fit brings in about 80% of overall users. Several of these users overlap across different offerings — which is the main idea behind the ecosystem being created by Cure.Fit.
Why do everything ?
In order to answer this question, we need to go back to the start of company. This was a venture of two ex-flipkartians. One who founded Myntra and the other being an early employee of Fipkart.
They decided to start this venture because both were health freaks and were bored/forced out of their jobs [5]. So, they decided to research by traveling the globe and see how they can approach this segment.
And, hence it began. In 2015 without a product out, they raised their first round with Mukesh himself investing upto 5 Million. They started stitching up the strategy that they laid out to their backers. Starting with acquisitions of Fitness studios , then moving to Yoga studios and then shifting to cloud kitchens. In terms of execution , you can’t match this space. The reason being, they had this planned out right from the beginning and there was no reason to wait it out because through their social capital ( past exits) they could raise unsurmountable money that no one else could.
In terms of cure.fit’s offerings for a more relatable understanding let us call them a circle of health. And cure.fit’s current offerings cater to an individual as depicted below.
Skeptics couldn’t fathom the importance of offering everything under a single roof and then use digital as a medium to manage the interactions. This was their execution platform that resulted as a single touch point for its customers.
You enter the circle using one service and then be sold everything else as well. The success of this strategy depends on how well you can execute and in that aspect there is no doubt that both the founders are exceptional.
This doesn’t discount that right now it has few gaping holes and leakages that it need to stop to retain better. Yet, most of the analysis of Cure.fit has gotten it wrong by comparing it to a normal startup trying to scale fast without finding its product market fit.
No, cure.fit was a growth company since the inception and has been built in such a manner that there is alway a bigger and wider segment ( circle ) to tap compared to what they offer.
A fork in the road
With the grim looking view that we are faced in this pandemic, Cure.fit double downed on its live.fit classes and are expanding the offering as i type this out.
The pace with which they launch and scaled up is impeccable. This will a be great experiment that both the founders will have a close eye on. Their biggest overhead is renting/leasing a facility and setting it up. Managing and training trainers, fill up facilities with customers to make it viable. This is usually the mesmerising touch point that converts lot of customers who are serious about physical fitness into a avid users of cure.fit offerings. But, what if, you can do the same thing with their live.fit feature? How will that then change things for them?
What is the growth that they would like to achieve once physical location is not a constraint anymore? Why not make digital as their only medium? Better as people dependancy becomes less and overheads reduce. Then the story of growth is only limited by number of human beings in their view.
Which brings us to whether they double down on expansion of centres or use live.fit as a strategy to expand? This will free up capital that can be used for deploying tech that they have set out to build in the first place. One of the visions that they have for cure.fit is that it should cater to the preventive part of treatment for any individual, here is one of the product leads mentioning their vision [6].
Other than weight loss, the app will help with diabetes, hypertension, thyroid, women’s health (PCOS/PCOD), heart health, gaining strength, managing stress, anxiety, sleep issues, relationships and anger. For everything, except for weight loss and strength, the person would need to consult a doctor. To manage anger, for instance, the app would ask for certain user inputs like how you respond in certain situations. Then, it would advise you to consult a psychologist or psychiatrist, perhaps one stationed at a nearby Mind.fit centre. The doctor would suggest lifestyle modifications, medication or counselling, all available—at high quality—within the Cure.fit universe.
So far the tech that they have built is boilerplate commerce platform that sells multiple things in a single vertical (health) with a strong brand affinity. And that is nothing less than a miracle in itself. But in order to transform itself into a tech company, they need the other parts as well. The actual tech that helps individual lives become better by being customised to their individualist needs.
This growth story and startup will always find an another vertical for it to launch because as i said before already, growth is not a phase but rather the story since the beginning. So, will it take the other road on the tech trajectory or just do both sides anyhow. That is what I will look out for in near future, both as a customer and as a observer.
Regards,
Vivek
References:
[1] :https://the-ken.com/story/cure-fits-patanjali-moment/
[2] :https://entrackr.com/2020/03/exclusive-cure-fit-raises-rs-832-cr-round-led-by-temasek/
[3] :https://entrackr.com/2020/02/cure-fits-search-for-numbers-will-customers-bite/
[4] :https://entrackr.com/2020/02/cure-fits-search-for-numbers-will-customers-bite/
[5] : https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/On1j4A72gfRCMy2ihTzIbK/Ankit-Nagori-The-early-riser.html
[6]:https://the-ken.com/story/curefit-the-high-temple/)
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Hi!!
Do they have a potential partner in decathlon for their clothing line and other equipment requirements??