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Reasons Why Harsh Mariwala-led Marico Invested in This Health-tech Revofit's revenue model is driven by three pillars – Advice, Eat and Shop

By Vanita D'souza

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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Entrepreneurship runs in Sunjay Ghai's blood. Between successfully exiting his a gelato ice cream chain business to starting his food cold chain company while an attempt to represent Atkins in India failed to materialise, the serial entrepreneur set the seed for Revofit and entered into health and fitness space.

In 2014, Ant Farm incubated Revofit and a year later, the startup launched its AI-driven tech platform for the app. The health-tech company's revenue model is driven by three pillars – Advice, Eat and Shop, which the serial entrepreneur claims make the platform a comprehensive health offering.

Recently, the company has reached one of its biggest milestones as it raised pre-series-A from Marico against 22.5 per cent paid up capital share.

Talking about the how the startup matched with Marico, Ghai says when Revofit's team first met Harsh Mariwala, Chairman, Marico liked the platform and the community it was looking to create.

Mariwala immediately asked his team to evaluate the opportunity and rest is history. Giving us five reasons why Marico was interested in Revofit, he shares:

Right Audience

The millennial audience in India is firstly becoming very aware of health and fitness in terms of product and services and are open to trying out new brands, they usually avoid legacy brands which they feel is too aunty for them. They are attracted to social media and rich content.

We are a millennial-focused company and the products that we are creating cater to that segment as we aim to grow with this audience; this means everything from our design of product packing to the message to the products itself has to be curated accordingly.

We aim to capture niches in the FMCG that Marico would not due to the massive size today, but it would be 5 to 10 years down the line, so they get in early with us.

The Community Building

Revofit is creating a large health and fitness community which will be a large potential pool of customers going forward.

A health and fitness community has a massive advantage. Here is a group of people who are already focused on living a healthy lifestyle so the potential to create and sell a multitude of products ranging from fitness supplements to nutraceuticals to ready to eat food to apparel. The blue sky vision is infinite in nature as the world moves to a healthier space.

Our plans for the next 5 years is become India's premier health-focused community and to continue to push the envelope when it comes to creating meaningful products for the Indian consumer, be it digital, physical kitchens and other touch points of our FMCG products.

Online + Offline Focus

We are a digitally focused company and we are a digitally native virtual brand. This brings learning in terms of digital acquisitions, which Marico aims to learn from.

We plan on utilising these funds to grow our digital community, to increase our footprint with our offline kitchens and invest in FMCG products.

Ready-to-Eat

There is a broader disruption happening all over the world. More and more people want to order their food and groceries etc. online. The way people are consuming food is changing and people want healthy products and services, lots of people are going to skip shopping for groceries and move directly to the ready product more and more.

This is where Revofit subsidiary Hello Green comes into play, with ready-to-eat foods within 30 minutes or chilled ready-to-eat items delivered anywhere in India with a shelf life of 30 days.

Team:

Marico loved the team and what we brought to the table. We are seasoned entrepreneurs who have a stellar reputation for getting in there, putting our heads down and building value for our investors.

Vanita D'souza

Former Senior Correspondent, Entrepreneur India

I am a Mumbai-based journalist and have worked with media companies like The Dollar Business Magazine, Business Standard, etc.While on the other side, I am an avid reader who is a travel freak and has accepted foodism as my religion.

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