SmartDeer Files IPO Prospectus: Powering Global Expansion for Chinese MedTech and Healthcare Companies with End-to-End HR Solutions

Chinese medical and health enterprises have long made it a common practice to expand into overseas markets.

From a domestic perspective, Chinese innovative drugs and medical devices have achieved remarkable results, but the domestic market is under pressure, prompting companies to seek out a "second battlefield." From an external perspective, whether it is the sound pharmaceutical policy environment in developed countries or the huge market demand in developing countries, both are attracting companies to go global in order to reach a higher "ceiling."

In fact, “going global” is not merely a current development trend in the medical and healthcare sector, but a major trend both within China and worldwide.

“Currently, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) worldwide are moving toward internationalization and actively expanding into overseas markets. On one hand, this is because domestic growth has hit a ‘ceiling,’ with local production capacity exceeding demand; going global allows these companies to unleash their production capabilities in the international market. On the other hand, advancements in technologies such as Web 3, blockchain, and AI have spurred the rapid development of enterprise instant messaging (IM), laying the foundation for large-scale global collaboration. Furthermore, the pandemic forced the widespread adoption of remote work, thereby enhancing public awareness and acceptance of online collaborative tools.”

As the head of SmartDeer pointed out, in today’s era where “any company can be a global company,” businesses inevitably face a common pain point: after addressing core issues such as strategic deployment planning and business layout, the key challenge becomes how to achieve compliant employment and management of employees on a global scale.

It was also in recognition of the opportunities presented by globalization that SmartDeer chose to serve enterprises of all types expanding internationally, entering the field of “one-stop human resources service solutions.”

In February this year, SmartDeer partnered with DingTalk, announcing that they would provide global HR SaaS services to Chinese enterprises expanding overseas. This means that Chinese companies going global can seamlessly access SmartDeer’s HR system services within DingTalk’s enterprise IM ecosystem. As Chinese healthcare and wellness companies accelerate their international expansion, SmartDeer also plans to offer further support to these firms in their global endeavors.

For companies expanding overseas, employee-related demands typically involve two aspects: first, sourcing suitable talent; and second, ensuring compliant hiring and management of employees. Currently, SmartDeer addresses the challenge of talent acquisition by leveraging its continuously expanding global talent pool. However, SmartDeer places greater emphasis on resolving issues related to the compliant hiring and management of corporate employees.

For companies expanding overseas, whether in the healthcare sector or not, variations in employment policies across different countries (involving labor law, tax law, corporate law, etc.) pose risks related to compliant employment practices. In the process of helping enterprises implement local employment solutions, some third-party service providers, due to a lack of established localized delivery networks, often leave companies with “ungrounded” employment arrangements that fail to materialize effectively. Even when implementation is achieved, compliance issues may further exacerbate the burden on enterprises’ employment operations.

Since its establishment in 2021, SmartDeer has been dedicated to enabling compliant employment for enterprises in overseas countries and regions. To address this challenge, the company has built a localized delivery network and meets the staffing needs of globalizing enterprises through standardized, compliant employment solutions aligned with local policies and regulations.

In this process, SmartDeer launched a two-step strategy——

On one hand, SmartDeer has established an extensive localized delivery network. It is reported that SmartDeer’s localized delivery network currently covers as many as 150 countries and regions worldwide. By collaborating with its carefully selected local third-party suppliers, SmartDeer provides services such as Employer of Record (EOR) to enterprises seeking global expansion. EOR services enable companies to compliantly hire full-time employees in target overseas markets where they do not yet have a legal entity, thereby meeting the needs of employers during the early stages of their international business development.

On the other hand, SmartDeer is actively building its self-operated delivery network in select countries. Within its localized delivery network spanning 150 countries and regions worldwide, its self-operated delivery network already covers more than 20 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. The establishment of this self-operated delivery network enables SmartDeer to meet enterprises’ workforce needs at different stages of development, such as by providing Employer of Record (EOR) services and Human Resources Outsourcing (HRO) services (global HR services: for clients that have already established legal entities in target markets and wish to outsource some or all HR functions to a professional team).

By establishing a global delivery network through partnerships with local third-party vendors, SmartDeer is able to meet clients’ staffing needs on the broadest possible scale and provide end-to-end solutions. Meanwhile, the development of its self-operated delivery network enables SmartDeer to address the varying requirements of enterprises at different stages of growth, while delivering high-quality services at competitive prices.

By building a localized delivery network spanning more than 150 countries and regions, SmartDeer has genuinely enabled companies expanding overseas to achieve compliant employment in their target markets. It is reported that, in response to the current overseas expansion needs of medical and health enterprises, SmartDeer is further enhancing its delivery network with targeted capabilities—building upon its standardized solutions for compliant global employment—to better serve the specific requirements of these companies. Such enhancements include strengthening talent pools in the pharmaceutical sector and gaining deeper insights into preferential policies for pharmaceutical companies and talent in destination markets, thereby helping enterprises achieve compliant, efficient, and cost-effective overseas workforce management.

As enterprises further advance their internationalization, managing both local and overseas employees has become a major challenge for global companies. In this process, enterprises must not only comply with local laws, regulations, and policy restrictions but also thoroughly assess their own operational needs to achieve efficient employee management.

It undoubtedly requires a user-friendly digital system for support. The demand for HR SaaS systems that enable compliant and efficient management of global workforces is becoming increasingly urgent.

The SmartDeer team has also recognized this demand. With over two decades of experience in the internet sector and a keen eye on cutting-edge technologies, SmartDeer developed a low-code platform to address these needs. In late 2023, riding the wave of Chinese leading office applications expanding overseas, SmartDeer collaborated with numerous enterprise software providers to launch the SmartDeer HR application, meeting businesses’ needs for compliant and efficient management of global employees during their international expansion.

On one hand, the SmartDeer HR system integrates deeply with enterprise internal IM systems, offering a simple and user-friendly interface. It seamlessly connects with Feishu (Lark), DingTalk, WeCom, Slack, and other enterprise internal IM collaboration management platforms. Leveraging this deep integration with enterprise systems, SmartDeer also helps organizations achieve unified internal management.

On the other hand, SmartDeer HR enables enterprises to achieve compliant and efficient management of their global workforce. Tailored to various user roles within an organization, the application fully addresses diverse corporate needs. Employees can use the app for information inquiries, payslip access, leave management, expense reimbursement, and more; while HR professionals can view comprehensive data on current, prospective, and former employees. The application also provides HR with standard employee report templates as well as customizable, exclusive reporting options. In the course of globalization, enterprises can leverage features such as permission management to implement more precise human resource management across different regions and hierarchical departments. Ultimately, the application delivers a dual enhancement in both experience and efficiency for global workforce management.

Furthermore, in light of the linguistic and other challenges encountered in globalization, the application also provides native support for enterprises, such as default language options including Chinese, English, and Japanese. Enterprises can also customize the system languages required by their HR teams in different countries according to their needs.

In fact, in recent years, influenced by the overall environment, pharmaceutical companies, especially multinational pharmaceutical companies, have paid more attention to data security. Along with globalization comes the challenge of data security and privacy. The head of SmartDeer has obviously realized this problem for a long time. At present, SmartDeer adopts the setting of dual headquarters in Singapore and Hong Kong, China, and deploys its SaaS services by using different cloud service providers to meet the requirements of different countries and regions for privacy and data security, further solving the worries of medical and health enterprises.

It is reported that SmartDeer is currently enhancing the usability of its global HR SaaS system and further expanding the functional modules required for human resource management, aiming to maximize benefits for small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) clients as it expands overseas alongside leading domestic enterprises.

Currently, labor demand varies among enterprises expanding overseas. Even within the same industry and sector, companies face differing workforce requirements corresponding to different stages of business expansion.

Taking healthcare companies as an example, some small and medium-sized healthcare enterprises are still in the early stages of global expansion, primarily exploring the feasibility of this path. During this phase, they have needs for recruiting local employees and utilizing flexible staffing solutions (part-time workers). As these healthcare companies develop, although they may not have established a physical entity in their target overseas markets, their business models have proven viable. At this stage, they seek to expand their market presence and aim to deploy localized full-time teams at the lowest possible cost. Furthermore, as their business scales and they establish local entities, they often choose to outsource part or all of their human resources functions to third-party providers to reduce operational costs.

In the face of complex and diverse staffing needs, third-party enterprises are expected to provide diversified services that cover the entire lifecycle of overseas employment for companies. SmartDeer is undoubtedly currently attempting to offer solutions to address this issue.

“By building a glocalized delivery network and providing digital product solutions, we not only meet the full-lifecycle service needs of enterprises for overseas workforce management but also jointly establish our competitive moat,” emphasized the head of SmartDeer. “In the future, we will further expand the construction of our global localized delivery network and optimize the SmartDeer HR SaaS system to strengthen our capabilities and deliver superior solutions.”

Currently, SmartDeer has served nearly 1,000 corporate clients, including industry leaders such as Johnson & Johnson and Amazon. In the healthcare sector, several companies have also partnered with SmartDeer to further expand into overseas markets by leveraging its capabilities.

“For SmartDeer’s leadership, the core focus for Chinese enterprises—including those in the healthcare and wellness sector—as they expand overseas should remain on building globally recognized Chinese brands. ‘Leveraging our one-stop global human resources solutions, we aim to accelerate the international expansion of Chinese healthcare and wellness companies and contribute our share to establishing Chinese brands with global recognition.’”