Google Backs ‘The Groupon Of Fitness Classes’

ClassPass is proving popular with Google Ventures, which has led a $30 million financing round for the fitness company.

VentureBeat reported Wednesday (Nov. 11) that Google Ventures spearheaded the financing, which comes nearly a year after a similar investment round grabbed $40 million.

The initial business model was as a class search site known as Classtivity, then the company tailored its approach to offer a $50 pass to entice users to try as many as 10 new fitness classes a month.

Now, the model is one where the company offers unlimited classes for a $99 monthly fee. There is, as VentureBeat noted, a rule in place that states that a studio can be visited a maximum of three times monthly per user. The company has grown to nearly 30 cities across the United States since its 2011 inception, with an additional five locations abroad, the newswire reported. It also bought one of its main rivals earlier in 2015.

ClassPass, for its part, said it has booked more than 10 million classes across its platform and that volume comes despite criticism that its “casual” users tend to slow down their more acclimated peers at a class they have never tried before or attend infrequently.

The company has also come under fire for double-digit price increases at some locations, which, at least in New York, led to some people quitting the service outright in July after prices were hiked by as much as 25 percent there, in essence boosting customer churn for ClassPass.

[bctt tweet=”ClassPass has also come under fire for double-digit price increases at some locations.”]

There’s also the contention from critics of ClassPass that the firm has made it so subscribers pay less, relatively speaking, than do others who tend to stick with, and are “regular” students, at a given activity.

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