China fitness app Keep pursues Hong Kong listing
Keep, a China-focused fitness app operator backed by the likes of GGV Capital, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and 5Y Capital, has filed for a Hong Kong IPO.
The company has raised more than USD 600m in private funding, most recently a USD 360m Series F last year led by Vision Fund 2. Hillhouse Capital, Coatue Management joined that round as new investors, while BAI Capital, GGV, Tencent Holdings, 5Y, and Jeneration Capital re-upped.
BW Ventures was the first investor in 2014, not long after Keep was founded, with BAI, GGV, and Ventech Capital also participating in early rounds. Other investors include Goldman Sachs.
GGV is the largest external shareholder with 14.73%, according to a prospectus. Vision Fund 2 has 9.48%, followed by 5Y on 7.65%, Tencent on 6.37%, and Jeneration, BAI, and Goldman on 5.73%, 5.45%, and 4.72%, respectively. Wang Ning, Keep’s founder and CEO, owns 16.97%.
Keep claims to be China’s largest online fitness platform by monthly active users (MAUs) and workout sessions completed by users. It offers fitness content and artificial intelligence-assisted personalised training programs encompassing live streaming classes and recorded courses. The company also sells smart fitness devices, equipment, clothing, and food.
For the six months ended June, it had average MAUs of 37.7m who participated in 1.1bn workout sessions. Of these MAUs, 3.7m are signed up to subscription packages – which offer access to customised premium content – and 517,000 have bought Keep fitness products. The company claims to be China’s largest yoga mat brand by gross merchandise value with a 14.9% market share.
Revenue reached CNY 1.62bn in 2021, up from CNY 1.1bn a year earlier. Branded fitness products contributed 53.9%, with 34.4% coming from memberships and online paid content. The company’s net loss widened from CNY 2.2bn in 2020 to CNY 2.9bn in 2021, largely due to rising customer acquisition and brand-building costs.
China Insights Industry Consultancy estimates that China has the world’s largest fitness population, which is set to grow from 303m in 2021 to 415.7m by 2026. Average spending by this group was CNY 2,596 per person in 2021, compared to CNY 14,268 in the US.
China’s fitness industry is fragmented and dominated by traditional offline gyms. Other investment activity in this space includes a USD 300m Series B last year for Fiture, which supplies full-length mirrors equipped with cameras that track and analyse the user’s movements.
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