HealthKart raises $135 million funding led by Temasek

Mumbai-based A91 Partners and Kae Capital also participated in the round, the company said in a statement.

According to a person familiar with the deal, HealthKart’s post-money valuation has touched Rs 3,000 crore (around $370 million). Post-money valuation includes the primary capital raised by the company.

Around $65 million was primary capital, while the rest came through secondary share sales by existing investors.
The company’s last valuation after its May 2019 fundraise was around Rs 1,109.80 crore, as per information sourced through startup data tracker Tracxn.

“We will not be commenting on the valuation figure,” HealthKart told ET following an email query. Avendus Capital acted as the financial advisor to HealthKart for the transaction.

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In its current avatar, HealthKart was formed in 2015 after the original brand HealthKart Plus saw its pharmaceuticals segment being hived off into 1mg, currently backed by the Tata Group.

The company was originally founded in 2011 by Prashant Tandon and Sameer Maheshwari, who now head 1mg and HealthKart, respectively.

Maheshwari told ET that HealthKart would use funds from the latest round to strengthen its brand by going deeper into adjoining categories, increasing its distribution network and continuing to invest in research and development.

“In addition, we also want to extend the HealthKart platform to international markets and we will also be looking at strategic acquisitions in the nutrition space which can fit into our platform,” he added.

On whether the company had started identifying acquisition targets, Maheshwari said: “We have started evaluating – if we see a good fit, or come across some founders… because now I think our scale has gone to a reasonable level and with available resources, we are in a position where we have also strengthened our platform.”

The company last raised $25 million in its Series G round in May 2019 from investment firm Sofina.

Maheshwari also said the company was clocking an annual revenue run rate of Rs 1,000 crore in the ongoing fiscal year, which represents an about 50% growth from its FY22 topline.

It has yet to file its FY22 results.

The company also plans to open offline stores as part of its omni-channel strategy.

“We were very nervous after Covid-19 about what’s going to happen to the physical world, but our platform has now grown three-fold since Covid-19, and we had to actually close a lot of stores (during Covid-19). We had 115 stores pre-Covid-19 and went down to 90 but now we’re back to 140 stores,” Maheshwari said.

He added that stores give the company a “strong advantage” in terms of tapping customers because this is a category that requires educating customers.

He said the company is going into tier-2 and tier-3 towns and would have around 250 physical stores by next year.

“HealthKart has the opportunity to build the largest and most significant consumer brand in the health and nutritional space. It is a digital-first pioneer which has successfully transitioned into an omni-channel business and achieved market leadership in the past five years in the segments it operates in,” said VT Bharadwaj, General Partner, A91 Partners.