Passport Asia shuts down gym memberships, sends customers to rival KFit

Photo credit: Passport Asia

Updated on March 2 at 6 pm: story now includes Passport Asia’s comments clarifying that the startup remains alive but is ditching its gym business.

Singapore’s Passport Asia, a startup that offers unlimited gyms and fitness classes for a fixed monthly fee, has shut down its memberships and asked its users to sign up with rival KFit under a promotional tie-up.

Passport Asia informed its users via email on March 1 that their memberships would no longer be renewed and the classes they booked from today onwards would be cancelled.

The company then offered its members a US$36 discount code they could use to sign up for their first month with Kuala Lumpur-based KFit.

Startups in this space have been struggling due to low customer retention.

Passport Asia explained to Tech in Asia it’s closing down its memberships – which comprise its entire business – but not the company itself, denying an earlier statement by KFit that the startup was shutting down.

KFit co-founder and COO Chen Chow Yeoh earlier told us in a text message, “In light of their closure, Passport Asia reached out to us to provide an option for their customers. We had a discussion providing a simple KFit promo code for their users to have the option to sign up with us.”

“That is the only partnership we are doing with them. We are not involved in any other parts of their shutdown. It’s always sad for the startup ecosystem when a startup decides to stop operating, and we wish their team all the best,” he continued.

Feeling the burn

Passport Asia says it partnered with KFit to transition customers in a way that causes zero disruption to them.

“I can confirm from my end that we are not shutting down. Transitioning the […] customers was part of moving forward,” said its chairman Sharad Lal.

His biggest challenge: how to create the habit of exercising among customers.

Pressed if this move was a pivot, Sharad replied: “Yes, we are pivoting from the consumer space.” He refused to disclose any details on the new plan.

Passport Asia launched in Singapore in June last year when competition in the space was already tough. Apart from KFit, which at the time had just raised a US$3.25 million seed round from Sequoia Capital, there’s another fitness startup called Guavapass.