HealthKart, a nutrition firm, has raised $135 million in growth funding led by Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings in partnership with venture capital firms A91 Partners and KE Capital.
The company said it will use the fresh capital to grow its in-house D2C brands, apart from investing on expanding its offline distribution and international operations. The company will also use a portion of the capital to make select acquisitions.
HealthKart owns and operates sports nutrition brand MuscleBlaze and online health supplement brand HKVitals. These products are distributed across online and offline channels, including its own platforms, e-commerce and instant commerce platforms, D2C websites, offline grocers and chemists and over 140 Healthkart-branded offline stores.
According to the company, its products are used by over one million consumers every month and its annual revenue run rate has crossed Rs 1,000 crore.
“We are delighted to partner with Temasek and A91 Partners in our mission to provide innovative, high quality, yet affordable preventive care solutions for Indian consumers. Promoting fitness and preventive health by addressing nutritional deficiencies is a systemic trend that is gaining ground in India. With HealthKart’s R&D capabilities and omni-channel distribution infrastructure, we are excited to move forward,” said Sameer Maheshwari, Founder and CEO, HealthKart.
The company was founded in 2011 as HealthKartPlus by Prashant Tandon and Maheshwari. In 2015, it spun off its pharmaceutical vertical into a separate company named 1MG Technologies. Maheshwari continued to head HealthKart, while 1MG, headed by Tandon, was acquired by the conglomerate Tata Group in a $450 million deal.
Avendus Capital acted as exclusive financial advisor to HealthKart for the transaction.
The investment is welcome news to the gloom and doom of the start-up ecosystem which is grappling with a severe funding crunch. Several start-ups in India have laid off employees in the last few months as VCs have become cautious about their investments. Healthtech start-up Healthifyme was the latest to join the layoff bandwagon, laying off around 150 employees. Recently, Versa, the parent firm of desi short video platform Josh, also laid off 150 employees. Other start-ups that have asked people to leave include Byju’s, Unacademy, Vedantu, Ola, Chargebee, MPL, Meesho, Cars24 and Udaan.
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