With at home workouts becoming the norm in a post Covid-19 world, it comes as no surprise that the appetite for larger companies to acquire those with healthy communities already working out on their technology continues to grow. Onyx, the California based fitness startup founded by Israeli entrepreneur, Asaf Avidan Antonir (previously at Illumio, LinkedIn, and Microsoft) in 2018 is being acquired by Cure.Fit (the Accel backed startup that was already valued at $500M back in 2019).
The startup acquisition makes great sense for Cure.Fit which was running a more holistic approach with owned-operated gyms for physical health, nutrition under a eat.fit brand and a mental health offering under care.fit. Ranked at 4.9/5 stars on the App Store the app boasts an impressive 4.7K reviews at the time of writing.
Per a recent public Linkedin post a few days ago on the 19th of January, Antonir announced the acquisition which equips Cure.Fit with new 3-D motion capture capability for mobile devices and a highly engaged community of fitness enthusiasts. The ability to track any exercise regime and then use AI to provide a critical layer of personalisation makes the acquisition a compelling buy for Ankit Nagori and Mukesh Bansal the cofounders of Bengaluru based Cure.fit (today seen as India’s largest health & fitness company).
This type of a transaction, east buying west, is likely to see further examples as Indian startups begin to raise significant rounds from funds that also have grounding in the United States and are likely to see expansionist activity to increase global marketshare. M&A muscles are likely to be flexed a lot more by Cure.Fit and other startups that had previously focused on in-person activity and have pivoted to more of a remote offering once the pandemic put their previous business model on notice.