New York-based ClassPass, a company that provides access to health clubs and other fitness venues through a flat-rate monthly subscription service, has acquired an Asia-based rival called GuavaPass.
Founded in 2013 by Mary Biggins, Payal Kadakia, and Sanjiv Sanghavi, ClassPass has raised about $239 million in funding to date. And Rob Pachter and Jeffrey Liu launched GuavaPass in 2015 and raised $5 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.
ClassPass made the acquisition to aggressively push its expansion internationally. And the company has been rapidly growing in the U.S. as well. At the time of the acquisition, GuavaPass partnered with 840 studio partners across 11 cities such as Abu Dhabi, Bangkok, Beijing, Dubai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Mumbai, Shanghai, and Singapore.
“To date, we’ve helped over 650,000 members get fitter and have accumulated approximately 110,000,000 sweat minutes (that’s almost like 460,000 completed marathons!)” wrote Cecilia Koo of GuavaPass in an announcement. “None of this would have been possible without you, our member community, so we’d like to extend a massive thank you for all the support that you’ve given us.”
ClassPass CEO Fritz Lanman told TechCrunch that the GuavaPass founders reached out to them. GuavaPass was in the process of raising more money and were developing some options, but they felt that they could continue working on their original mission under ClassPass. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.
About half of the GuavaPass team will be hired as part of the acquisition. And with the acquisition, ClassPass is now available in 80 markets across 11 countries with plans to expand to 50 new cities this year.
ClassPass participated in the Techstars accelerator program in 2012. And then ClassPass bought FitMob in 2015. Last year, ClassPass entered the Singapore market, which is where GuavaPass is based.
