Keep Raises $127 Million: Largest Funding Round in the Internet Fitness Industry

Internet fitness company Keep Inc. raised the single largest fundraising round in the world’s Internet fitness industry, with Goldman Sachs leading the $127 million investment in their Series D round on July 10.

SEE ALSO: Keep becomes China’s largest social sports platform

The Beijing-based company has previously raised a total of $60 million from fundraising 5 rounds with lead investors such as Tencent Holdings and GGV Capital who also participated in this round. Other investors from this round include Morningside Ventures and Bertelsmann Asia Investment Fund.

Founded four years ago by CEO Wang Ning and three friends, the Keep app is more like a home workout trainer and fitness coach in an online social community. After first launched on February 4, 2015, Keep passed the one million users mark in 109 days. Last August, they obtained 100 million users and now they have over 120 million users.

More than a fitness app, Keep is a lifestyle brand with Nike as its benchmark, as CEO Wang stated in an interview.

This March, Keep launched two new strategic products: Keepland and KeepKit. Keepland is Keep’s brand of offline fitness centers, first of which opened in a central business district in Beijing. Keep plans to open two to three Keepland gyms in all first-tier cities in China this year to test the waters.

KeepKit is Keep’s line of home workout machines. The first KeepKit product is a treadmill and the second is still under development. Keep is also incubating another product named KeepUp, a line of fitness apparel, and venturing abroad with the app’s international version.

Keep is also testing new ways of monetizing their flagship app as they will be testing out paid content such as exercise videos and customizable fitness services such as personalized fitness plans. They once generated revenues through traditional in-app advertising and e-commerce.