65438+1October 1 1 day, Keep announced that it has recently completed the $360 million series F financing. This round of financing was led by Softbank Vision Fund, followed by Gaochun Capital and Cotu Capital, and other old shareholders such as Tencent, Wuyuan Capital, Times Capital and White Capital also increased their investment.
The National Business Daily reporter noted that the valuation of Keep after this financing was US$ 2 billion, double the valuation of US$ 654.38+0 billion in the last round of financing in May 2020. Prior to this, Keep*** completed seven rounds of financing. Therefore, in less than a year, the valuation has doubled. What did Keep do right?
In addition, along with this financing, there are also foreign media reports that Keep will consider IPO (initial public offering) as soon as this year. In this regard, Keep told reporters: "There is no IPO plan for the time being."
From Tools to Platforms At the end of 20 14, Keep was founded by Wang Ning, a sports and fitness enthusiast, focusing on mass users. With free courses, easy-to-use products and elegant style, Keep quickly became a star company in the field of sports technology in that round of mobile internet entrepreneurship.
According to public data, Keep was launched in February 20 15, and it took only 8 days to break through 1 10,000 users. At that time, it seemed that discussions about Keep could be seen on many social media, and Keep has increasingly become one of the most commonly used communities for fitness enthusiasts.
However, a lively fitness community is not what founder Wang Ning wants.
At the end of 20 15, Wang Ning said in an interview that the success or failure of e-commerce business will determine the life and death of Keep. If Keep can't transform into a profitable internet company on 20 16, then Keep has no chance.
Therefore, from this Keep, it extends from online to offline, from software to hardware. On April 20 16, Keep began to go online, from selling goods around sports to commercial exploration, and transformed into a sports platform.
In 20 18, Keep began to increase service scenarios for business exploration, and defined the strategic main lines of "family scenarios" and "urban scenarios" for the first time, and then began to expand rapidly from business lines to personnel.
But it is also followed by the outside world's doubts about the Keep business model and the pressure of its own operating costs. At the end of 20 19, Keep began to shrink and shut down some businesses that failed verification.
Therefore, for Keep, the past year has also been a year of reorganizing its adjustment strategy.
In 2020, Keep will focus on family sports scenes and improve one-stop sports solutions. It is understood that at present, more than 300 million users have obtained sports services in family scenes through Keep, and the number of members exceeds 65.438+million.
After six years of development, Keep is no longer a simple App with both sports and social attributes, but has been constantly exerting sports consumption, and has been involved in intelligent hardware, sportswear, light food and auxiliary training equipment. , and is committed to becoming a sports technology platform.
The transformation of the live broadcast "Dongfeng" strategy obviously means that the implementation level also needs to be changed. The reporter noted that due to the epidemic, Keep's online and offline channels have also been adjusted accordingly.
The reporter learned that continuous optimization of online sports content is the key direction of Keep 2020. In addition to more than 1200 sets of self-study courses, we also introduced super sports people such as Pamela and Saturday Wild, and made progress in the exploration of brand copyright, and introduced overseas famous sports content IP such as Zumba and Laimei.
At the same time, with the help of the east wind of live broadcast, Keep has established a live interactive team of nearly 100 people including course designers, live broadcast coaches and brokerage operators. After half a year's development, the live broadcast coach Tiantuan has attracted millions of fans.
The trilateral growth of live coaches, PUGC content creators and users also makes Keep's "platform" strategy clearer.
According to reports, through the development of live broadcast business for half a year, the cumulative number of fans attracted by live broadcast coaches has reached millions, and the commercial value of live broadcast coaches has begun to take shape.
For example, Keep smart spinning bike, a product independently developed in the field of family sports with on-site coaches as a link, has been used for more than three times. During the Tmall Double Eleven in 2020, bicycle products ranked first in the turnover of similar goods. In addition, Keep also iteratively upgrades intelligent hardware such as treadmills and sports bracelets to continuously optimize the categories of sports gadgets. Up to now, the annual sales of Keep sports consumer goods has achieved an annual growth of 100%, becoming a new brand of domestic sports.
Some insiders believe that the rapid growth of this financing valuation is largely due to the hot home fitness scene since 2020, which directly drives the growth of Keep users and revenue. After a new round of financing, Keep said that it will continue to explore the sports needs of mass users around family scenes and enhance the fitness service experience.