Goldman leads $127m round for Chinese fitness app
Goldman Sachs has led a Series D funding round worth $127 million for Keep, a Chinese mobile app that provides fitness training programs.
Several existing investors also participated, including GGV Capital, Morningside Ventures, Bertelsmann Asia Investments (BAI), and Tencent Holdings. Prior to this latest investment, Keep had raised $60 million across five rounds, according to a statement issued by GGV.
Founded in 2014, Keep positions itself as a one-stop sports activity platform, covering fitness training, running, cycling, yoga, guidance on healthy eating, equipment retail, and social networking. In August 2017, total user numbers surpassed 100 million, including more than 20 million monthly active users. Keep is available in more than a dozen languages and has also attracted nearly two million users in international markets.
The Series D capital will go towards product development in the artificial intelligence space, incubating new business lines, and improving app content.
“The sports and fitness market has enormous potential within the context of China’s general consumption upgrade,” said Kaixun Zhang, a managing director at Goldman Sachs. He noted that, in addition to establishing itself as a market leader for online fitness content, Keep has made preliminary breakthroughs in the intelligent sports hardware space and is well-positioned in terms of developing an integrated online-to-offline (O2O) sports ecosystem.
Ventech China and BAI committed $5 million in Series A funding in April 2015. This was followed by a $10 million Series B, featuring GGV and Ventech, later the same year. GGV and Morningside then co-led a $32 million third round in May 2016, with participation from BAI. Not long afterward, Tencent provided an undisclosed sum in Series C-plus funding.
Several other Chinese companies in this area have received PE and VC backing. They include Lefit, an O2O fitness platform that received a RMB300 million ($46 million) Series C round led by Hillhouse Capital last October. The start-up runs 200 self-owned fitness centers in addition to providing app-based services.
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