Nine-month-old startup KFit has raised $12 million Series A to go beyond offering fitness services to its clients in select places in Asia and Australia. Venturra Capital led the round with participation from existing investors — Sequoia Capital India and 500 Startups — and new investors SIG and Axiata Digital Innovation Fund.
The company allows users to find gyms and fitness center packages without signing up for a long-commitment contract. This same arrangement helps gyms tap on a new audience of potential users, and yes — it looks a lot what ClassPass is doing in the West.
With fresh capital under its belt, KFit now wants to expand and turn itself into what the CEO Joel Neoh calls an “active lifestyle platform” that would also include related categories such as spas, beauty services and massages.
“We ask ourselves: ‘How do we help people exercising find things around them?’ – and that comes down to discovery,” Neoh told TechCrunch in an interview.
The KFit service is live in 10 cities in Asia, as well as Australia, Taiwan and Korea, where it has reportedly taken 250,000 activity reservations from some 4,500 gyms and fitness centers. The plan is to expand to two or three new cities, and more importantly, lock down on a business model that could (potentially) help the company reach profitability by year’s end. Considering that KFit is burning around $320,000 per quarter, that sounds like a bold goal.