A leaked financial document says that “PingAn Good Doctor”, a medical service platform launched by the digital subsidiary of PingAn Insurance Group, is conducting its Series B fundraising, which will total around USD 500 million. PingAn Good Doctor’s valuation is estimated at USD 3 billion before the fundraising round, reported Sina Tech on Thursday.
Growing at an unprecedented rate, online medical service platforms in China are racing to raise huge funds. Tencent-backed online medical service giant Guahao.com raised nearly USD 400 million last September.
According to the leaked document, JIC Group, a private equity fund set up by China Jianyin Investment Ltd., will invest USD 100 million.
PingAn Good Doctor was launched in April 2015 by leading Chinese insurance company PingAn Insurance, which ranked 32nd on Forbes’ 2015 list of the top 2000 listed companies in the world. This app provides users with services including 24-hour one-on-one consultation from full-time specialists in all medical divisions or doctors from 3A-class hospitals. It provides quick diagnosis, treatment and online appointment booking, among other services. It is also embedded with an online healthcare mall selling medicines, tonics, healthcare products and the like.
The company claims that, as of November 2015, it had 25 million users registered on its app and more than 650,000 daily active users, and received consultation requests from 95,000 users every day, on average. According to the leaked document, the company had 1000 full-time medical professionals and partnerships with 50,000 doctors as of the end of 2015.
The company also said that it received a revenue of RMB 300 million in 2015 and that its target for 2019 is to gain 300 million to 500 million users.
According to Sina Tech, China’s healthcare market was valued at RMB four trillion in 2015, and is forecasted to increase to RMB 10 trillion in 2025. The digital healthcare market has so much potential that it has drawn attention from many companies, including the BAT giants.
PingAn Good Doctor’s rivals are mainly Tencent-backed Guahao.com, which was established in 2010, Chunyu Doctor, which has a user base of 80 million, DingXiangYuan, a Doximity-like online social networking service, which secured a USD 70 million investment from Tencent in 2014, and also AliHealth’s app, launched in 2015.
An interesting detail is that although the parent company of this app, PingAnHealth, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of PingAn Group, its managing team consists mostly of former employees from Alibaba.
(Top Photo from Baidu Images.)
