KFit want to expand their service beyond Fitness

If you regularly visit the gym, chances are you have use Kfit before even without you knowing it. The program is used by trainer to make sure that the gym members are getting the results they want. Recently the company announced that it closed a $12 million Series A funding round to move into new verticals.

The said round is led by Southeast Asian VC Ventura Capital, alongside companies that has funded the new program such as SIG and Axiata Digital Innovation Fund. Other investors like Sequoia Capital India and 500 Startups make the deal possible.

In the past, KFit was started for consumer use to help them find gyms and fitness center packages without the need to sign up for a long-commitment contract. For gym owners, it is used to tap in the bigger market of the fitness industry. CEO Joel Neoh , who created the site Groupon before, claimed that, the new site was more than that as the model has shifted over the year.

Neoh claimed that the platform is now used for building an “active lifestyle platform”, which is used by gyms and fitness centers as it include categories related to their service such as spas, beauty services and massages. He added that the new system focuses at services, but won’t be selling physical goods. The KFit system is like an online-to-offline service centered on fitness and wellness services rather than a place to buy sports equipment.

In an interview Neoh said: “We ask ourselves: ‘How do we help people exercising find things around them?’ — and that comes down to discovery,”

The said system is only available to countries like Asia, Australia, Taiwan and Korea. Report claims that it has taken over 250,000 activity reservations from some 4,500 gyms and fitness centers.

Neoh believe that it would grow even larger this 2016 as it centers locking down its business model and (potentially) hitting profitability by the end of the year. It is expected that the profit would be reached before the end of the year since KFit was carding a fairly high monthly burn rate — negative $320,000 in Q3 2015, 80 percent of which went to staffing.

KFit CEO is expecting that there would be three new expansions happening in the coming months. This might mean that Indonesia would benefit from the expansion, but neither China nor India wouldn’t’ be getting some. Reports claimed that the expansion is based on vertical expansion, but don’t have to do with the location. This move might bring KFit into competition with a range of dedicated beauty booking platforms, which include Vanitee and Rocket Internet – backed Vaniday.