Fitness marketplace ClassPass acquires competitor GuavaPass

Published January 7, 2019

ClassPass, the five-year-old fitness marketplace startup with $239 million in financing, is acquiring competitor GuavaPass, which was founded by Rob Pachter and Jeffrey Liu in 2015.

ClassPass is in the midst of an expansion sprint, both domestically and internationally. The company is hyper-focused on Asian markets, where GuavaPass had carved out its own place with 75 studio partners across 11 cities, including Abu Dhabi, Bnagkok, Beijing, Dubai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Mumbai, Shanghai and Singapore.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

This is not ClassPass’s first acquisition. In 2014, ClassPass acquired competitor FitMob. But CEO Fritz Lanman says that this is less about competition and more about opportunity.

“The GuavaPass founders reached out to us,” he told TechCrunch. “They said that they were raising more money and had some options developing but that they felt they could continue working on their original mission as a part of ClassPass. They are really missionaries for the space.”

ClassPass will be bringing on about half of the GuavaPass team as part of the acquisition. However, Lanman doesn’t expect to do many acquisitions in the future, saying that “acquisition isn’t a part of the company’s expansion strategy.”

Alongside regularly planned expansion, the acquisition now puts ClassPass in more than 80 markets across the 11 countries, with plans to expand to 50 new cities in 2019.