Zhengdu Health Files for IPO: Ambition Beyond Monetizing Its 200M+ Health-Focused Followers

“The video that gained two million followers within two hours of being posted solidified my resolve to make this vision a reality—ensuring that, regardless of location, the general public can access professional and reliable medical health information equally with just a tap on their smartphones.”

After sharing a brief anecdote, Qiao Zeping, founder of Guangzhou Zhengdu Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Zhengdu Health”), made the following remark.

In this short story, Qiao Zeping, who was at home recovering from an illness, “on a whim” recorded short videos based on the knowledge taught by his professors in medical school and posted them on Douyin. Within two hours, his account gained 2 million followers thanks to this video; after one day, the video had amassed 83 million views.

 Qiao Zeping, Founder of Zhengdu Health

What followed was an “overwhelming” flood of WeChat friend requests, incessant phone rings, and Alipay friend requests and inquiry messages—“It was only then that I realized Alipay could also be used for chatting.”

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“How desperate must they have been to trust a health education video recorded by an inexperienced young person online?”

This incident left a deep impression on Qiao Zeping, prompting him to reflect: How can we provide them with more substantial assistance? And how can we help more people like them?

This is the original intention behind the founding of Zhengdu Health.To date, Zhengdu Health has signed and incubated over 300 “influencer” physicians, accumulating more than 200 million followers in the health-focused vertical across all online platforms. Starting from producing public-welfare science popularization videos for faculty members at Southern Medical University to achieving compliant and reasonable commercialization of health education content, the company’s co-created short videos have garnered over 50 billion views nationwide. In 2021, Zhengdu Health secured Series A financing from prominent investors.

In early May, Zhengdu Health was prominently featured in the Top 30 of VCBeat’s “China’s Top 100 Innovative Digital Healthcare Companies” list.

In the arena of digital marketing for pharmaceutical content, Zhengdu Health has achieved phased success. However, in recent years, despite the booming development of digital marketing for pharmaceutical content, it has been accompanied by numerous controversies. Regulatory authorities, platforms, and related industries have begun to exert efforts and continuously strengthen oversight. Against the backdrop of increasingly stringent regulations, Zhengdu Health has not lost confidence in the industry; instead, it has become increasingly active.

Health science popularization before 2022 could indeed be described as “wild growth.”

For instance, as the industry was in its very early stages of development at the time, a lax regulatory environment allowed numerous accounts and MCN agencies to emerge, prioritizing rapid commercialization by publishing eye-catching yet highly misleading content. Misleading claims such as “Add one ingredient to plain water to solve major health issues for men and women,” “Combine red dates with one item to drive away diabetes,” and “Black beans plus one herbal remedy cure early-stage diabetes—ancient wisdom prevails” were ubiquitous.

On the one hand, for members of the public lacking discernment, such videos may pose health risks and even induce cognitive biases, leading to distrust of scientifically rigorous medical education or professional medical advice. This can further delay treatment and jeopardize health. On the other hand, not all individuals lack discernment; the rise of such content may also provoke aversion among this group, causing them to develop similar resentment toward scientific and authoritative medical education, or even an intense phobia of it.

As a result, not only will truly valuable medical and health content fail to achieve effective dissemination, but the entire industry of popularizing medical and health knowledge, and even the digital marketing sector for pharmaceutical content, will face a situation where “bad money drives out good.”

In this context, relevant national authorities have successively introduced policies to promote the standardized development of the industry. For instance, the *Code of Conduct for Online Streamers*, jointly issued by the National Radio and Television Administration and other relevant departments, explicitly requires streamers engaged in the medical and health sector to hold corresponding professional practice qualifications.

In April this year, Douyin also issued new regulations—prohibiting MCNs from managing healthcare-certified accounts. Although this rule is widely seen as primarily aimed at curbing the practice of healthcare accounts directing users to seek medical consultations off-platform, it still sent shockwaves through the digital marketing industry for medical content, even though the corporate retention rate in this sector had already dropped to 10% in recent years.

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For example, pharmaceutical companies are in urgent need of the support offered by healthcare-focused Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs). This is because, in recent years, with the implementation of the Generic Drug Consistency Evaluation and the centralized volume-based procurement of drugs, profit margins for domestic pharmaceutical enterprises have been further squeezed, prompting them to embark on a path of “cost reduction and efficiency enhancement.”

Among these strategies, digital marketing is highly sought after by pharmaceutical companies due to its advantages of low cost, broad reach, and efficient communication. Consequently, in recent years, many pharmaceutical firms have actively embraced digital marketing transformation. Healthcare-focused Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs), which possess substantial resources and extensive expertise in producing and operating high-quality content, are well-positioned to provide significant support to pharmaceutical companies in this endeavor.

For platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, the value of medical MCNs is more subtle. According to the “Douyin Health Science Popularization Data Report” released by Douyin, healthcare has become one of the most-watched content categories among Douyin users. Meanwhile, data from Kuaishou Health’s “2021 Kuaishou Big Health Industry Data Value Report” shows that big health-related videos generate 118% higher average engagement than the overall average on Kuaishou, while big health-related live streams achieve 394.9% higher average engagement compared to the platform’s overall live streaming average.

In other words, healthcare and medical content not only diversifies the types of content on such social platforms, but high-quality healthcare and medical content can also drive substantial engagement, thereby holding the potential for higher conversion rates.

For patients and physicians, on the one hand, the professional content creation and operational capabilities of medical MCN (Multi-Channel Network) agencies can help doctors better build their personal brands and expand the reach of their accounts; on the other hand, science popularization content professionally produced by health-focused MCNs (excluding the aforementioned misleading content) enables users to access professional medical and health knowledge more conveniently and quickly, in a manner that is easy to understand. As the saying goes, “Even the finest wine fears a deep alley.” Doctors’ professional knowledge can only benefit households across the nation when promoted by specialized short-video operation teams.

Therefore, healthcare MCNs hold value for pharmaceutical companies, short-video platforms, physicians, and patients (users). This is precisely why Qiao Zeping remains optimistic about the development of the healthcare MCN industry, even amid stringent regulatory oversight.

Furthermore,Qiao Zeping has stated in multiple interviews that 2023 marks the inaugural year of digital marketing for pharmaceutical content.

The reason is that,First, prior to this, both the state and platforms have respectively introduced policies and issued regulations to guide the standardized development of the industry, laying the foundation for a relatively standardized ecosystem conducive to the production of high-quality content;

Secondly, from the perspective of high-quality content supply, although there is already a vast amount of popular science content on healthcare and medicine available on platforms, data provided by platform operators indicates that the supply of such medical popular science content still falls short of demand.

Finally, “In fact, since 2022, there has been a notable shift in the pharmaceutical industry’s attitude toward digital content marketing.“Pharmaceutical companies that had previously been unresponsive to multiple outreach attempts or had even explicitly declined cooperation proactively reached out to us last year to express their interest in collaborating.”

Therefore, the convergence of these factors points to a clear trajectory: the digital marketing industry for pharmaceutical content is poised for takeoff, with 2023 serving as the starting point.

So, for companies operating within this landscape, how can they seize and solidify opportunities in a relatively constrained commercialization space?

An industry insider once said, “Whoever has the ability to control health-related IPs possesses the core competitiveness.”

In this regard,Zhengdu Health has incubated and cultivated over 300 physicians and professional nutritionists, each with an influence reaching millions of users. It has published 200,000 videos, accumulated over 50 billion views, and reached a cumulative audience of more than 200 million users across the entire internet.

However, the aforementioned industry insiders also emphasized: “The bonus period of explosive growth for doctors’ IP-driven land grabs has come to an end. Under these circumstances, leading institutions with strong control over the industry will continue to strengthen their dominance, resulting in a pronounced Matthew effect.”

Qiao Zeping largely agrees with this discussion on the “Matthew Effect” in the industry. However, at the same time,Qiao Zeping also pointed out that the number of physician IPs is merely one manifestation of a company’s deeper capabilities. This underlying capability refers to the much-discussed issue in recent years: the ability to produce and operate high-quality content.

Undoubtedly, Qiao Zeping is someone who places immense importance on building this capability. This is directly reflected in the early development path of Zhengdu Health.

Imagine that when you are launching an MCN agency, would you prefer to sign accounts with an existing fan base, or would you rather help a “non-celebrity” doctor build their presence from scratch?

Qiao Zeping chose the latter. The primary reason is closely tied to building robust capabilities in content creation and operations: “If you collaborate with physicians who are already internet celebrities, your own content creation skills will not be honed, as the true expertise in content creation lies firmly in the hands of the physicians themselves. However, if you choose to work with ‘ordinary’ physicians from the ground up, you will not only forge a strong ‘camaraderie’ and secure greater influence, but also significantly refine your own capabilities in content creation and operations.”

After years of refinement, Zhengdu Health has indeed established and perfected a comprehensive system for the creation and operation of short-video content focused on health science popularization.

At the team level, 70% of Zhengdu Health’s content team members possess professional backgrounds in both medicine and media, ensuring rigorous quality control over medical popular science content.

Furthermore,To align with the platform’s rigorous “AI + human” dual-review mechanism, Zhengdu Health bases its popular science content on clinical practice guidelines and leading medical journals. While fully respecting physicians’ expertise, Zhengdu Health presents their knowledge in the most accessible and down-to-earth manner.

Meanwhile,ZHENGDU HEALTH has also implemented tiered management for the content published by its affiliated accounts.For instance, Zhengdu Health permits only medically certified users to publish medical science popularization content, while individually certified accounts are restricted to publishing general health science popularization content. For content published by certified physicians or medical institutions, Zhengdu Health employs both preliminary review teams and professional teams for concurrent auditing; additionally, specific review models have been implemented for health science popularization content posted by ordinary users.

Not only that,Zhengdu Health also places great emphasis on building and maintaining trust between accounts and users. Therefore, Zhengdu Health requires doctors to appear on camera in person.In Qiao Zeping’s view, featuring real people on camera helps reduce the prevalence of rumors, marking a significant distinction between the graphic-and-text era of Science Popularization 1.0 and the short-video era of Science Popularization 2.0.

At the same time, it is worth noting that in the fourth quarter of 2022, Zhengdu Health’s strategy underwent a shift—expanding from exclusively signing “ordinary” doctors to collaborating with physician accounts that already had an existing fan base.

Behind this transformation lies the maturation of Zhengdu Health’s content production and operational capabilities, as well as a manifestation of its economies of scale.

Achieving economies of scale means that Zhengdu Health has established a foundation for commercialization, and even gained a competitive advantage in this regard.

As Qiao Zeping stated, “Since Zhengdu Health has already achieved economies of scale, a client may find that partnering with Zhengdu Health alone yields better outcomes than collaborating with ten separate institutions. Meanwhile, these economies of scale also reinforce the stability of cooperation between Zhengdu Health and physicians, thereby creating a ‘winner-takes-all’ dynamic where the strong grow stronger.”

Furthermore, the commercial capabilities of Zhengdu Health can also be gauged from its partners.

According to Qiao Zeping, as of now, Zhengdu Health has provided digital marketing solutions for pharmaceutical content to 200 well-known domestic and international pharmaceutical companies, including Bayer, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Sino-American SmithKline, China Resources Sanjiu, and Baiyunshan. Meanwhile, Zhengdu Health is also a content partner of Ali Health and JD Health.

Meanwhile, it should be pointed out thatIn addition to the conventional commercialization approach of popularizing medical and pharmaceutical knowledge, Zhengdu Health will also integrate resources such as B2C and O2O e-commerce sales channels, physical pharmacies, and internet-based smart healthcare platforms, thereby completing its transformation from a service-oriented enterprise to a platform-based enterprise.

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In the interview, Qiao Zeping also provided a more detailed explanation: “At this stage, the core competitiveness of Zhengdu Health lies in its massive traffic volume. All we can do is choose with whom to partner for traffic monetization. But“In the future, Zhengdu Health may fully leverage its traffic advantages to empower various aspects of the pharmaceutical industry, including industry-academia-research collaboration and sales.”

andIn the concluding remarks of the interview, Qiao Zeping emphasized the importance of omnichannel marketing in the future of digital content marketing within the pharmaceutical industry.

How to Understand Omni-Domain Marketing? From the perspective of influencer types, given that platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou possess varying degrees of localization characteristics, pharmacists at local pharmacies can also be cultivated as influencers, thereby achieving the goal of driving traffic to these pharmacies. From the platform perspective, the cultivation of influencers and content distribution will inevitably trend toward a cross-network, multi-platform approach in the future. Furthermore, commercial conversion pathways are likely to shift from the current model of “in-platform discovery and off-platform conversion” to “in-platform discovery and in-platform conversion.”

For example, Douyin has recently begun piloting live-streamed pharmaceutical sales. Since April of last year, Douyin E-commerce has gradually opened up the sale of health supplements and certain medical devices, and in December, it launched an OTC (over-the-counter) drug category, inviting specific brands to join the platform.

Perhaps, as Qiao Zeping stated, the entire industry is on the verge of taking off.