KFit, Asia's counterpart of US-based fitness service provider ClassPass, announced today that it bought Groupon Malaysia after recently acquiring Groupon Indonesia in August.
KFit is one of the most-funded subscription-based fitness service providers in Asia that raised over $15million from investors like Sequoia, Tech Crunch reported. Now it's become clear that KFit is shifting to local services.
Besides Malaysia and Indonesia, KFit already provides fitness subscription for customers in 10 different cities in Asia. Fave, which is what Kfir uses to reach out to more people, is operating in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore.
There are no concrete reports yet as to how much KFit spent to buy Groupon Malaysia. But KFit will still retain 90 percent of the workforce in Groupon Malaysia, as the executives will move on to a different position.
KFit is the leading provider of online-to-offline services in Southeast Asia and is rapidly growing through its Fave platform, China Money Network reported. Groupon Malaysia has millions of customers in its thousands of different local businesses. It will shift to Fave in 2017, which will expand the platform's offerings to businesses in entertainment, hotels, restaurants, beauty, leisure, fitness and more.
Groupon Indonesia has transitioned to Fave this year.
Fave is a platform that helps local retailers reach their consumers through the internet, especially through their mobile devices. Offline-to-online (O2O) is a rising trend in China and KFit is planning to ride that wave.
KFit CEO Joel Neoh said that there are millions of local business that are making it big in China thanks to O2O and the millions of consumers that started to use these platforms as part of their everyday life. And KFit wants to be at the forefront of this trend, Neoh said.
Neoh founded the group-buying platform GroupsMore in Malaysia. Just a few months after it was launched, Groupon acquired it. Later on after the acquisition, he left the company and started KFit in 2015.
Joel Neoh's co-founder Yeoh Chen Chow was the regional operations director of Groupon APAC, so it all adds up.
There are reports that KFit was struggling financially, especially after it raised the $12 million funding, which is why its founders veer off from US's' ClassPass style and came back to what they do best, Groupon. This is one alternative theory why they shifted.