GOQii Eyes Entry Into UK, S-E Asian Markets As Travel Restrictions Ease

Health-tech company GOQii expects to embark on its planned overseas expansion drive that was held up amid the pandemic and is hopeful of announcing entry into markets such as the UK and South East Asia in coming months as travel restrictions ease, according to a top official.

GOQii Smart Healthcare, founder and CEO, Vishal Gondal, told PTI the company would opt for partnership-based strategy for some of the new markets and expressed hope that the overseas plans would be set in motion by 2021-end.

The expansion plans "got delayed because of restricted travel" amid the pandemic, Gondal said adding, "hopefully in the next few months, we will be announcing market entry in the UK, South East Asia and other parts of Asia".

"Those plans are still underway, we will be announcing them. We are waiting for travel restrictions to get over....hopefully by end of 2021," he said.

The company's strategy would be somewhat different for these markets and GOQii intends to team up with local strategic partners including large healthcare firms or insurance companies to make inroads in these geographies.

"Unlike India, where GOQii is directly the brand, in some of these market we will have strategic partners, so we will be announcing strategic partnership in those markets," Gondal said.

GOQii is looking to raise USD 75-100 million in coming months and remains confident that growth in preventive healthcare business would sustain in the long term.

GOQii's proposed fundraising will include both new and existing investors and the company expects to conclude the funding round by year-end.

"We will be in the market to raise a large round, we will be looking at USD 75-100 million fund raise. So that is something on the cards," Gondal said.

The company will "soon" start the process of raising the funds, he informed.

GOQii marquee list of investors include Mitsui, NEA, Megadelta, DSG Consumer Partners, Galaxy Digital, Denlow Investment Trust, Edelweiss, Cheetah Mobile, GWC, and corporate leaders like Ratan Tata and Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

GOQii is into wearable based smart-tech enabled fitness and healthcare and its platform brings together preventive healthcare ecosystem.

The smart health ecosystem integrates tools for personalised coaching, a health e-commerce store, scheduling health check-ups, a health locker, and the 'GOQii Cash' program where healthy behaviour is rewarded with cash discounts and insurance discounts based on health management data.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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