Forerunner in Digital Biotech: FulaiBao Unveils Integrated R&D Ecosystem After Three Years of Strategic Development

Yesterday, Fulabao held its opening ceremony and a seminar on frontier technologies in biological R&D applications at Raffles City Chengdu in the Wuhou District, officially launching the Fulabao Biological R&D Ecosystem Platform.

Sichuan Fulabao Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Fulabao")It is among the first enterprises in China to organically integrate digitalized biopharmaceutical R&D processes with cutting-edge AI technologies,As early as 2019, Fulibao had already made strategic moves in this sector. Over the years, it has been accumulating expertise and focusing on product development.

Biological research and development has been designated as a key strategic direction in China’s 14th Five-Year Plan. This initiative prioritizes tasks such as advancing biotechnological innovation, fostering innovative industrial applications, enhancing capabilities in biotechnological innovation, and promoting the growth of the bioinformatics industry, with a particular focus on areas including biopharmaceuticals and the substitutional application of biomaterials.

Fullabio believes that biopharmaceutical R&D applications will also shine uniquely in Chengdu, a fertile ground integrating information technology and biomedicine, and that Chengdu will become the next flywheel accelerating the development of the biotechnology industry. However, after in-depth industry research, Fullabio found that the current capital market is very cautious, and that focusing on product refinement should be the top priority for enterprises. Therefore, it deliberately slowed down its fundraising efforts and only initiated financing once the biological R&D ecosystem platform was put into operation.

As expected, with the support of its product, Fulaibao’s seed funding round proceeded exceptionally smoothly and was completed this July. The company is scheduled to launch its angel funding round in October and will focus on product R&D and continuous refinement over the coming year.

Founding Fulibao was not Zhang Longfan’s first entrepreneurial venture. As early as 2015, he established Zhifei Group, which focused on researching enterprise solutions for informatization, digitalization, and intelligent transformation. During its development, Zhifei incubated solutions and successful case studies in the financial, manufacturing, and military industries, ultimately reaching the industry’s pinnacle through its military sector achievements and becoming a well-known enterprise in Chengdu.

Zhang Longfan’s initial foray into the domestic biological applications sector was sparked by a key opportunity. In 2019, a prestigious Chinese research institute launched a project to build a key biological laboratory and sought partners nationwide to address challenges in standardized process management and project oversight. Upon learning of this, Zhifei Group reached out to the institute. At the time, Zhifei had no prior experience in the field of biological R&D applications and faced skepticism from the institute. However, undeterred, Zhang Longfan was determined to tackle this daunting challenge. Under significant pressure, he initiated comprehensive research and began to gain an in-depth understanding of China’s biological R&D application landscape from the ground up.

“We were unaware until we conducted research, which came as a shock; the domestic application of biological R&D is truly a blue ocean.”Fulaibao surveyed 130,000 domestic biotechnology companies and, through analysis of massive datasets, identified significant future potential in the application of biological R&D. Furthermore, Zhifei’s existing products have already received feedback from financial advisors (FAs) and venture capital firms, who have expressed strong interest, further validating that Fulaibao’s strategic direction is correct.

Finally, the Fulaibao team unanimously agreed that it was an opportune time to invest in the field of biological research and development applications. To focus more intently on this direction, they spun off this business segment from Zhifei, establishing a new company and team known as Fulaibao.

Thus, long before any market signs emerged, Fullabio had already strategically positioned itself in the field of biological R&D applications.

Fulaibao’s founder, Zhang Longfan, is originally from Sichuan Province. After graduating from university, he worked in Japan for five years before returning to China to serve as CEO of a private enterprise for another five years, thereby accumulating both overseas experience and extensive management expertise. In choosing Chengdu as the base for his startup, besides the founder’s nostalgia for his hometown, another key factor was the support from the Chengdu municipal government, which aimed to showcase Fulaibao’s products as a flagship example in its investment promotion efforts. Ultimately, Fulaibao decided to establish Chengdu as its “home base” from which to expand its business footprint across China.

“Once the ‘base of operations’ was selected, assembling a team of talent became an urgent priority. Team building began in 2019, but the company was not formally established until 2022; it took Fulibao three years to break through the industry’s talent barriers. However, founder Zhang Longfan stated that this time investment was well worth it, because ‘talent is our core competitive advantage.’”

Talent accumulation represents a major barrier in the field of biological R&D, and Fullabio requires interdisciplinary professionals with composite expertise.“It was only when we began our search for talent that we realized how difficult it would be,” analyzed Zhang Longfan. “The development of biological research in China inevitably relies on a large pool of interdisciplinary, multi-skilled professionals with cross-industry expertise.”

First, Flybio reached out to Professor Peiyuan Yu of Southern University of Science and Technology. A leading expert in biological and computational chemistry, Professor Yu has published more than 50 research papers to date, including 20 as first author (including co-first authors) or corresponding author. His work has appeared in top-tier journals such as Science, Nature Catalysis, Nature Communications, and Chem. With deep academic expertise and an entrepreneurial spirit, Professor Yu was invited early on to join the founding team of Flybio. As one of the company’s founders, his professional capabilities have become a core competitive advantage for Flybio.

Furthermore, Fulaibao has attracted Dr. Tian Yang, a jointly trained Ph.D. graduate of Beihang University and the University of Tokyo. Dr. Tian is a technical expert in the field of artificial intelligence in China. He previously pursued advanced studies in biomedical informatics as a visiting scholar at the University of Kentucky and has served major multinational corporations such as Airbnb and Deloitte, possessing cross-industry professional expertise and technical capabilities. The addition of Dr. Tian has significantly strengthened Fulaibao’s technological prowess.

During project collaborations with renowned domestic research institutes, many high-caliber professionals in the life sciences sector have expressed their willingness to join Fullabio, becoming the backbone of its product research and development efforts.

Precisely because of its early start, talent has become even more scarce. In addition to actively recruiting top professionals, Fullabio also places strong emphasis on cultivating internal talent. Over the past few years, the company has developed a cohort of professionals aligned with its growth needs. Today, Fullabio boasts a robust R&D team with core technologies and research capabilities in biotechnology, computational chemistry, and artificial intelligence. The company maintains close industry-academia-research collaborations with numerous universities and biotech enterprises, facilitating the commercialization of scientific and technological achievements.

To achieve significant accomplishments in the field of biological R&D,First, it is essential to continuously learn and consolidate theoretical knowledge in biology to establish a systematic knowledge framework.Fulaibao conducts employee training three to four times per month.

Secondly,"Partner with enterprises that have deep industry expertise; 'the biggest pitfall for startups is self-indulgent enthusiasm.'"Zhang Longfan stated that, through continuous collaboration with enterprises, Fulaibao has been identifying industry pain points and truly driving product improvements based on actual needs.

The Fulibao team brings together interdisciplinary talent from the fields of biology and computer science, enabling a deep understanding of the digitalization needs in biological R&D.Currently, the R&D process in biotech companies faces three major pain points: low efficiency, high costs, and difficulty in achieving breakthroughs.Low efficiency manifests in two aspects: first, low management efficiency due to limited digitalization, with most processes still relying on manual spreadsheet management; second, low R&D efficiency caused by the use of numerous, non-unified tools and cumbersome workflows. High costs encompass elevated expenses for consumables, labor, and management, all of which stem from high trial-and-error costs and a lack of scientific guidance resulting from low levels of digitalization.

Whether for biotech companies or academic research institutions, there is an urgent need for a comprehensive tool system to address existing pain points, enhance management, and achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement.

Understand industry pain points. Finally, Fulaibao needs to create sales scenarios and develop tangible products.Fulaibao’s R&D efforts extend beyond tools such as note-taking applications, which will be offered free of charge to university users. This freemium approach aims to capture user needs, identify areas for improvement during product usage, enhance overall product quality, and precisely address users’ practical research requirements.

The Fulabio Biological R&D Ecosystem Platform comprises three core business systems—Biji, Data Warehouse, and Machine Learning—as well as two management systems for Asset Management and Project Management. By integrating data to form a closed loop, it establishes an ecologically digital platform that leverages advanced computing services to empower and enhance the biological research and development process.

Refining the product,It takes time. Fulaibao aims to establish an automated, intelligent, and integrated biological R&D ecosystem platform. This biological R&D platform’sOur target clients are any enterprises and individuals who wish to focus their efforts on biological research.Including research institutes, biopharmaceutical and biotechnology enterprises, medical testing agencies, and other end-users involved in biological experiments.

Zhang Longfan’s product logic is as follows: “The first stage involves building information infrastructure; the second stage marks the transition from informatization to digitalization. Once data has been accumulated and digitalization achieved, biological assets are generated, enabling enterprises to store these biological assets. Subsequently, this foundation helps enterprises achieve breakthroughs in AI—the third stage—realizing intelligence. Throughout this entire process, Fulibao has essentially helped biotechnology companies complete their internet revolution.”

After years of dedicated efforts by the team, continuous collaboration with other enterprises, and iterative product improvements, Fulaibao has now established a smoothly operating ecosystem platform, with a user base exceeding 2,000.

Fulaibao has stated that its products will remain free of charge to universities and colleges. Currently, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sichuan University, and Southern University of Science and Technology are all clients of Fulaibao.

In the interview, Zhang Longfan repeatedly emphasized:“Settle down and do the foundational work well; otherwise, you’ll be too impetuous.”

Whether it was the initial site selection, the screening of team talent, or the subsequent product development, Fulaibao has always started from market demands, pragmatically solving problems and “avoiding all that superficial nonsense.”

After completing team building and securing seed-round financing, the company officially commenced operations. As its products gained traction, Zhang Longfan revealed that the next steps would be to rapidly iterate the products and quickly scale up volume.

After stepping away from the day-to-day operations of Zhifei Group, Zhang Longfan has also devoted himself fully to the startup venture of Fulai Bao. The company will vigorously promote product commercialization in the short term, with commercialization expected between 2022 and 2023, while its medium-term plan is to achieve an initial public offering (IPO).

In the long term, Fulaibao aims to become a company with genuine social value. “Of course, this will require the test of time,” Zhang Longfan said with a smile.