HealthKart, in its current avatar, was formed in 2015 after the original brand HealthKart Plus saw its pharmaceuticals segment being hived off into 1mg, which is 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 the company would use the funds to strengthen the HealthKart 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 said.
On whether the company has 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 a Series G round back in May 2019 from investment firm Sofina.
Maheshwari also said the company is clocking an annual revenue run rate of Rs 1,000 crore for FY23, which represents about 50% growth from its FY22 topline. It is yet to file its FY22 earnings.
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VT Bharadwaj from A91 Partners said: “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”.
“We are excited to support Sameer and his team as they double down on their core offering, and expand the health and supplement basket to new categories (high protein food) and new customers (children),” Bharadwaj said.
The company also plans to open offline stores as a part of its omni-channel strategy. “We were very nervous after Covid about what’s going to happen to the physical world, but our platform has now grown three-fold since Covid, and we had to actually close a lot of stores (during Covid). We had 115 stores pre-Covid and went down to 90 but now we’re back to 140 stores,” Maheshwari said.
“Stores give us a strong advantage in terms of tapping customers because this is a category that requires educating customers. We are going to constantly see stores expand. We are going to tier-2 and tier-3 towns and I see by next year we should have around 250 physical stores,” he said, adding that stores would be just one of the company’s distribution channels.
