Cure.fit acquires Seraniti

Health and Fitness startup CureFit has acquired integrated mental wellness platform Seraniti. CureFit has rebranded Seraniti clinics at Bengaluru and Pune as Mind.fit, which offers online, and offline yoga, meditation and therapy services.

Seraniti was founded in 2016 by mental health practitioner. It offers psychotherapy services through 15 in-house professionals. Its team assesses the users' requirement and matches them to the right therapist. Users can then book an appointment. Seraniti claims it undertakes about 500 sessions a month in Bengaluru and Pune.

The Seraniti app is no longer available for users. Seraniti customers will be transitioned to the Mind.fit fold and will have access to yoga and meditation centres and do-it-yourself tutorials. They can now book appointments though the Cure.fit app.

Mind.fit claims to be India’s largest yoga chain with a membership of about 11,000, conducting 160 classes a day across its over 70 centres. CureFit is backed by venture capital firms Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital and Chiratae Ventures, which was previously known as IDG Ventures India. It formally launched the flagship Cure.fit mobile app in May last year. 

Another offering is Cult.fit, which runs offline centres that offer equipment-less workouts including strength and conditioning exercises, spinning, boxing, mixed martial arts, zumba and yoga. Eat.fit is its subscription-based food delivery vertical while Mind.fit focuses on yoga and meditation. Its latest offering, Care.fit, offers a digital platform for doctors and health checkups.

Paytm to acquire Travel portal Via.com

Flush with funds from Japan Softbank, digital wallet and e-commerce company Paytm is eyeing another acquisition. The payments firm has held preliminary talks to acquire online travel company via.com. Paytm, which is run by One97 Communications Ltd, is looking to invest close to $80 million to acquire the Bengaluru-based travel portal.

In March this year, the Alibaba-backed Paytm tied up with US-based online travel portal Priceline Group’s Booking.com, to expand its travel business. The company then said it will invest Rs 300 crore to further grow this business and that it is also looking to ramp up its Bengaluru-based travel marketplace team to over 250 people in the next two quarters. Paytm’s travel marketplace enables users to book hotels, flights, trains and bus tickets on a fast, secure and convenient platform. In January 2017, the Noida-headquartered company claimed to have crossed $500 million in annualized gross merchandise value.

Via.com, owned and operated by Flightraja Travels Pvt Ltd, was founded in 2007 as an offline business-to-business travel site. It currently functions as a travel deals aggregator and ticket booking site. Its inventory includes ticketing in flights, hotels, holiday packages as well as car and bus services. The firm had raised $5 million from Indo US Venture Partners (now Kalaari Capital) in 2007 and followed it up with a $10 million round from Sequoia Capital in December 2009.

Following its $200 million funding from Alibaba and SAIF Partners into to its e-commerce arm in March this year and $1.4 billion from SoftBank in May this year, Paytm has been on a multi-pronged expansion drive. It has made a number of investments and acquisitions and effected key appointments, internal movements, and new business strategies. Earlier this month, the company was in talks to acquire deal discovery app Little and online deals startup Nearbuy to strengthen its hyperlocal play.

CureFit buys Kristys Kitchen

Bangalore based healthcare and fitness start-up CureFit has acquired online health food delivery company, Kristys Kitchen for an undisclosed amount of cash and stock deal. CureFit Healthcare Pvt. Ltd provides services such as fitness advice and medicine deliveries.

Kristys Kitchen is in the segment of preparing and delivery of International healthy food cuisines. Founded in September 2016, the company has a kitchen in Bangalore and claims to be operationally cash positive and servicing over 250 orders a day. Backed by Kalaari Capital, Accel Partners and IDG Ventures, the company had raised $15 Million in Series-A round of funding last year in July. Later in August, CureFit acquired fitness centre brand Cult for $3 Million.

CureFit plans to offer it’s three main planned services – health food subscriptions, Cult Fitness subscriptions and mental wellness offering, focusing on prevention side of healthcare. Healthcare can be broadly divided into prevention and cure. Prevention has four important parts: eating healthy, active lifestyle, mental wellness, regular health check-ups. CureFit will be launching fitness, mental wellness—DIY (do-it-yourself) packs of yoga and meditation and food.

Snapdeal ties up with Mapmygenome

The cutthroat competition in the Indian e-commerce market has seen many websites try to outdo each other by offering unique services. Snapdeal seems to be super aggressive as far as expansion is concerned. After cracking partnership with Tata Value Homes, the Delhi based company has tied up with Mapmygenome India to offer DNA testing services.

Founded in 2012, Mapmygenome India is a company that offers a range of services to paint a picture of one’s genetic makeup and suggest ways to lead a better and healthier life. The services offered on Snapdeal include Cardiomap, Genomepatri, Mycalmbeat, and Webneuro. With this service, customers will be able to order personal genomic tests, which will help them identify the ideal lifestyle to lead a healthy and fit life. Mapping the genome aids in predicting, preventing, and treating a number of diseases. Mapmygenome offers tests in between Rs 1,000 to 25,000.

Cardiomap evaluates if you are at risk to heart diseases or diabetes based on your genetics. The service costs Rs 12,000 on Snapdeal. Genomepatri is the most expensive of the lot, priced at Rs 25,000. It essentially studies one’s DNA and suggests ways to change one’s lifestyle to lead a healthier life. Mycalmbeat, priced at Rs 5,000 is described as a personal stress reduction monitor that decreases stress and increases focus on personalized slow breathing. Webneuro, priced at Rs 1,500 is a web based 30 minute test that assesses the cognitive strength and weaknesses of individual. The collaboration will help both companies in reaching out to out 25 Million+ members across the country and enable them to understand the gene-disease interaction better.

Snapdeal has also announced its entry into the hospitality segment with 50,000 products across brands like cookware and bakeware, dining and serving and bar & glassware among others. Last month, Snapdeal raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Ratan Tata. Earlier this year, it had raised $133 Million led by eBay along with Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel Capital, and Saama Capital.