Chinese Fitness App Keep Becomes 1st Unicorn in Sports with $80M New Financing

Chinese mobile fitness community Keep announced that it had completed an $80 million E-round of financing earlier this year, and thus became the first fitness tech company to achieve unicorn status. 

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This financing round was led by Jeneration Capital, and followed by shareholders GGV Capital, Tencent, Morningside Venture Capital and BAI Capital

Founded in 2014, Keep has more than 200 million users. It started as an online fitness tutorial app that also features a community space. As the app grew in popularity, the company launched its own brand of sports related consumer goods such as fitness equipment, electronic devices and clothing. In 2018, Keep opened offline gyms named Keepland that feature group classes. 

As the home base for Keep, the app has accumulated 3.6 billion pieces of user behavior data. The business mode has expanded from providing course content in the early stage to providing one-stop fitness services including workout recording, challenges, product purchase and wellness guidance.

On the other hand, online Keep stores that sells smart devices, sports clothing, training equipment and healthy food aim to cover all dimensions of “eating, wearing, using and training.” Smart devices such as treadmills, spinning bikes and sports watches connect products with content and data from the app to provide a more efficient and interesting training experience. 

The company said it will continue to focus on the mission of offering better fitness solutions and to strengthen its advantages in content and product. It aspires to be a sports experience platform and brand that really addresses users’ exercise needs.