According to QuestMobile data, in the first half of 2021, the monthly per capita APP usage of all mobile Internet users in my country reached 26.3.

　　Of these apps that users often use, most of them are "pampering" users, providing users with entertainment needs as much as possible.

However, there are also some APPs that go the opposite way and want to "control" users, such as Keep, an online fitness platform that recently submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

　　Can a "challenging humanity" business model make money?

　　It's not calories, it's money

　　In February 2015, the Keep APP was launched.

After 4 months of launch, Keep has reached 1 million MAU (monthly active users), and the users are mainly young groups in first- and second-tier cities.

　　The good market response has made Keep highly sought after by capital.

According to the Tianyancha APP, Keep has completed 8 rounds of financing, and the latest round is the US$360 million Series F financing in January 2021, led by SoftBank Vision Fund.

　　The prospectus shows that in 2020, the average number of monthly active users of Keep will be 29.73 million, which will increase to 34.36 million in 2021, and the average number of monthly active users in the third quarter of 2021 will reach its peak of 41.75 million.

According to the CIC report, Keep has become the largest online fitness platform in China in 2021.

　　Behind the market share of scenery, it is natural to avoid the conventional strategy of Internet companies - "burning money".

　　According to the prospectus, in 2019, 2020 and the first three quarters of 2021, Keep's sales and marketing expenses were as high as 296 million yuan, 301 million yuan and 818 million yuan respectively, accounting for 44.6%, 27.3% and 70.6% of total revenue respectively. %.

　　Under the huge marketing expenditure, Keep has not been able to achieve profitability, and even its losses are further enlarged.

The prospectus shows that in 2019, 2020 and the first three quarters of 2021, Keep’s adjusted net losses were 366 million yuan, 106 million yuan, and 696 million yuan, respectively.

　　In the first three quarters of 2021, when the losses were the largest, the net loss was as high as 696 million yuan, while the figure in the same period in 2020 was only 15.55 million yuan, a substantial increase of about 4380% year-on-year.

　　Regarding the large losses in the first three quarters of 2021, Keep said: "As our confidence in our long-term profitability strengthened, we strategically increased our investment in traffic acquisition and branding for the nine months ended September 30, 2021. spending to further acquire, activate and retain users.”

　　Retaining users faces huge challenges

　　Keep burning money can attract new people, but the challenge lies in the retention of users.

　　On the one hand, users of social and entertainment apps use it multiple times a day; for fitness apps such as Keep, most users only open it when they plan to exercise, and the frequency of use is relatively low.

On the other hand, fitness requires users to have strong self-control and overcome their own inertia.

　　In addition, the fees of online fitness platforms are relatively cheap, which also leads to a very low "default cost" for online paying users.

　　According to the prospectus, the monthly active users of the platform in 2020 will increase by 36.56% year-on-year, and in 2021, it will increase by 15.55% year-on-year.

Even if Keep spends a lot of money on marketing, the growth of monthly active users in 2021 is still weak.

　　Selling goods and classes, it is difficult to build a moat

　　According to the prospectus, in 2019, 2020 and the first three quarters of 2021, Keep's total revenue was 660 million yuan, 1.11 billion yuan and 1.16 billion yuan respectively.

Its revenue is mainly composed of three parts, namely, its own brand products, membership subscription and online paid content, advertising and other services. Among them, its own brand products are currently the main source of revenue for Keep, accounting for the proportion of total revenue. ratio of more than 50%.

　　Self-owned brand products mainly refer to related products such as smart bicycles, smart scales, clothing and food. In addition to low gross profit margins and low thresholds, these products are also highly competitive in the market.

Taking smart hardware as an example, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Baidu's Xiaodu and FITURE Magic Mirror have all launched products such as fitness mirrors, treadmills, spinning bikes, rowing machines, etc. Cut into the entrance of smart fitness through hardware.

　　In terms of paid content, the gross profit margin of this business is relatively high, but the premise is that there are enough users who are willing to pay for the content.

　　Today, video platforms with huge traffic such as Station B, Douyin, and Kuaishou have already deployed many content creators perpendicular to the fitness sector.

For example, Pamela, the UP master of station B, which was popular on the whole network last year, currently has nearly 7.4 million fans on station B, and the reading volume of a single content exceeds 100,000. These content creators are strong competitors of Keep.

　　There are a lot of fitness-related content on various platforms, and at the same time, the fitness section lacks user stickiness, which makes Keep facing great challenges in content payment.

　　Finally, let’s look at the advertising business. The essence of advertising is the realization of traffic. However, as mentioned above, users of fitness APPs have a low frequency of use. At the same time, Keep itself also faces challenges such as user acquisition and retention. At present, the imagination of advertising revenue is relatively limited. Limited and unlikely to become the main source of revenue for the company.

　　Chengdu Business Daily-Red Star News reporter Yu Yao and Liu Mi