Yunkai Yamei Completes RMB 200 Million Series C Funding to Build a China Model for Specialized Disease Management
Incarey’s 15-Year Journey in Specialized Disease Management: A Strategic Practice for Specialty Conditions Within China’s Unique Ecosystem
After nearly two decades of ups and downs, internet healthcare is shedding its label of “superficial engagement.” The key to competing in the next phase lies in reaching the core of medical services and delivering internet-based healthcare solutions that are oriented toward treatment and management outcomes.
To this end, incarey (Zhejiang Yunkai Yamei Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd., hereinafter referred to as “incarey”) has been dedicated to this mission for over a decade. By transforming the supply side of specialized medical care, it has reshaped the connection between doctors and patients, enhanced patient experience, and provided solutions to improve healthcare outcomes across the entire disease course, thereby establishing itself as a leading internet-based multi-specialty digital healthcare service platform in the industry.
According to VCBeat, incarey has announced the completion of its RMB 200 million Series C financing round. The round was led by NEA, one of the world’s leading healthcare investment funds, with follow-on investment from existing shareholder Changling Capital.
Incarey’s 15-Year Journey in Specialized Disease Management: A Strategic Practice for Specialty Conditions Within China’s Unique Ecosystem. In an exclusive interview with YiOu Health, Mr. Liu Yunjiang, Founder and CEO of Incarey, reflected on his entrepreneurial journey. Having witnessed decades of evolution in internet healthcare, he has observed the extensive interplay between policy and industry. Throughout this period, improving the quality of life and health outcomes for patients with chronic and special diseases has remained Incarey’s unwavering original aspiration.
Mr. Liu Yunjiang, Founder and CEO of incarey
Since its founding in 2011, incarey has evolved into an integrated service platform combining “education, medical care, management, pharmaceuticals, and insurance.” It has successfully operated disease-specific lines in rheumatology and orthopedics, central nervous system disorders, and oncology, gradually establishing a comprehensive chronic and special disease management system that covers the entire patient journey, offers full-spectrum services, utilizes omnichannel engagement, and provides a complete product portfolio. Data-wise, incarey precisely reaches millions of patients with chronic and special diseases, while its physician-user base is growing rapidly. The company has also formed strategic partnerships with numerous leading domestic and international pharmaceutical enterprises. By accurately matching the core needs of physicians, patients, and pharmaceutical companies, incarey has achieved high revenue growth and industry-leading profitability.
Liu Yunjiang rarely grants media interviews. As the helmsman who keenly perceives current trends and precisely steers the development pace of incarey, he offers a courteous nod before speaking, fully embodying the demeanor of a humble gentleman. Amidst the lingering aroma of tea, he meticulously elaborates on incarey’s business model. During the interview, he does not confine himself to the narrative of entrepreneurship or mere anecdotal experience; instead, he directs his reflections more toward addressing the pain points in healthcare and those faced by patients.
When asked about the motivation behind his entrepreneurial journey, Liu Yunjiang offered an answer that was both emotional and deeply human—Improve Patients' Quality of Life and Health。
Upon entering the premises of incarey, the phrase “Improving Patients’ Quality of Life and Health” is prominently displayed on the wall. The same statement appears at the bottom of every article published on its official WeChat account, a reflection deeply rooted in Liu Yunjiang’s personal experiences.
In 2005, Liu Yunjiang co-founded Jian Geng Pharmaceutical, a company dedicated to providing comprehensive solutions for organ transplantation and chronic disease management. Through direct interactions with patients, he identified the plight of those suffering from chronic and critical conditions: “Transplant recipients often require lifelong medication. For liver transplant patients, annual medication costs amount to approximately RMB 100,000, yet they lack adequate health management support, resulting in suboptimal survival rates and quality of life.” The longing yet helpless gaze of patients depicted in the film *Dying to Survive* left a deep impression on Liu Yunjiang. “That portrayal accurately reflected the real-life circumstances of patients at that time.”
“At that time, there were no specialized companies dedicated to disease-specific management. To better support organ transplant recipients, he began overseeing chronic disease management across the entire patient journey—communicating with physicians, collecting health management data from nursing stations, and delivering educational materials to patients via telephone and mail. This marked the initial approach to patient management, through which expertise in managing chronic and special diseases was accumulated. ‘From an initial cohort of 1,000 patients, growing to 10,000, then 50,000, and eventually hundreds of thousands, we have progressively built up our experience in managing transplant patients. Over time, as our chronic disease management methodologies have expanded, the company has established its own unique competitive barriers,’ analyzed Liu Yunjiang.”
In 2011, Liu Yunjiang was deeply inspired after observing how the U.S. pharmacy chain CVS delivered chronic disease medications through its network. Driven by the heartfelt aspiration to bring clarity and renewed vitality to patients, he made a pivotal addition to his business plan, marking the birth of Yun Kai Ya Mei (incarey).
Management of chronic and special diseases is inseparable from medication. Since its inception, incarey has provided patients with an online pharmacy platform and complementary professional after-sales services, specializing in medications for chronic and special conditions. By accumulating data on patients with these conditions and leveraging its deep understanding of such diseases, incarey avoids merely acting as a “drug mover.” Instead, through its professional pharmaceutical care and patient education services, it was honored as one of the “Top Ten Pharmaceutical E-commerce Companies in China” in 2015.
In 2018, incarey was the first to propose building a Digital CSO with deep vertical specialization in niche areas of chronic and special diseases. For the management of such conditions, disease selection and timing of market entry are critical. incarey has focused on chronic and special diseases that require long-term treatment, have immature therapeutic options, exhibit high patient adherence, and are primarily paid out-of-pocket. It is estimated that this market exceeds RMB 500 billion and remains a vast blue ocean.
The first department to pioneer this approach was Orthopedics. incarey integrated online and offline resources around the specialized condition of osteonecrosis, achieving a unified service model combining medical care and pharmaceutical services. In simple terms, its online platform, YunKai Pharmacy Network, reaches patients directly, with professional medical assistants and licensed pharmacists providing one-on-one follow-up and specialized pharmaceutical care. Offline, it collaborates with specialized departments to assist experts in managing patient disease progression, truly enabling early detection and early treatment. Through its independently developed system, early-stage osteonecrosis patients who underwent hip-preserving therapy showed significant improvement after 12 months. The image of these patients easily and smoothly playing golf greatly inspired the entire incarey team.
Leveraging its deep understanding of chronic and special diseases and a keen grasp of their pain points, incarey implemented a “methodology replication” strategy, rapidly expanding into specialized departments such as oncology and central nervous system disorders over the following four years. “Pain points are often our opportunities,” Liu Yunjiang pointed out incisively.
incarey 7S Operational System
Identifying Pain Points Requires In-Depth Analysis. incarey has developed a proprietary 7S operational framework for specialized diseases, which analyzes intervention points through seven steps: clinical pathways, opportunity insights, resource sourcing, innovative breakthroughs, process reengineering, model deepening, and sustained momentum. Liu Yunjiang pointed out that when selecting a specific disease area, they examine physicians’ clinical pathways, patients’ actual healthcare-seeking journeys, the pharmaceutical ecosystem, and incarey’s existing resources. Based on this operational framework, they then formulate their own strategic approach. It is precisely due to this methodology that incarey has successfully avoided pseudo-demands and weak demands in the internet healthcare sector.
To further enhance patient treatment outcomes, incarey established the Hainan Yiyun Multi-Specialty Internet Hospital in 2020. Patients can consult online through the internet hospital, where precise doctor-patient matching and long-term specialist services are provided based on individual disease progression and treatment plans, significantly improving healthcare efficiency and medication accessibility.
Through its strategic deployment of internet-based medical services, prescription services, and pharmaceutical care services, the company provides whole-course chronic disease management for patients. It establishes a complete closed loop encompassing prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and patient education, thereby creating a one-stop comprehensive service platform integrating health education, medical care, disease management, pharmaceuticals, and insurance. By planning carefully before acting and knowing when to stop to achieve success, incarey has secured significant advantages. Currently, incarey’s core therapeutic areas leverage resources from thousands of experts at top-tier (Grade 3A) hospitals and serve millions of patients with chronic and special diseases. These substantial figures reflect incarey’s strength in specialized disease management.
As Liu Yunjiang often quotes, “What truly transforms healthcare must be rooted in compassion, guided by reverence, and forged through time.” This has been powerfully validated by his journey with incarey. By centering on patient needs and addressing the pain points of patients, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies alike, a competitive business model naturally emerges.
Driven by patient needs, incarey is also intensifying its strategic layout to build an ecosystem for vertical disease-specific industrial chains.
First is the issue of cost. Even as medical technology advances rapidly, the reality remains that patients are often unable to afford care when confronted with serious illnesses. In early September, a blogger known online as “A Jian Strives to Live,” whose real name was A Jian, sadly passed away at the age of 34 due to late-stage rectal cancer. Burdened by poverty and unable to cover the exorbitant costs of cancer treatment, he described himself in a video posted after his cancer recurred as “a complete mess.” These few words poignantly captured the despair felt by cancer patients. The inability to pay for treatment has become the most stark and pressing dilemma facing those with cancer. Colorectal cancer, the disease from which A Jian suffered, has a recurrence rate of nearly 50%, with subsequent treatment costs reaching hundreds of thousands of yuan. The high recurrence rate and prohibitive treatment expenses have deterred many insurance companies, resulting in virtually no specialized insurance products being developed for this condition.
To provide greater peace of mind for patients like “A Jian” during treatment, incarey has customized the “Chang Fu Bao” insurance product specifically for colorectal cancer patients. Developed through comprehensive whole-course data analysis of hundreds of thousands of colorectal cancer cases and joint research with insurance partners, this coverage addresses medical expenses related to postoperative recurrence and metastasis, enabling patients to access appropriate treatment regimens without financial burden. The insurance product received an enthusiastic response upon its launch. Consequently, by integrating multidimensional resources in the field of chronic and specialized diseases, incarey has established an integrated comprehensive service platform encompassing “education, medical care, management, pharmaceuticals, and insurance.”
Overall, the management of any chronic or special disease must address three key challenges: enhancing service sustainability, ensuring information integrity, and enabling payment feasibility. incarey has strategically deployed its presence across chain pharmacies, health consulting, internet hospitals, and specialized disease insurance to break the “impossible triangle” of internet healthcare.
Secondly, there is a renewed emphasis on humanistic care for patients. Dr. Edward Trudeau, a pioneer in American public health, once pointed out that medicine focuses on those who are struggling with pain and illness and are most in need of spiritual support and clinical care. Since the capabilities of medical technology itself are limited, it is essential to compensate for these limitations through the humanistic care demonstrated in physician-patient communication.
In China, breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer among women. In 2020, there were 416,000 new cases of breast cancer in China, equivalent to one diagnosis every 76 seconds on average. With advances in medical technology, the survival rate for early-stage breast cancer can reach 90%. A breast cancer diagnosis is nothing short of a major catastrophe. After surgery, the physical loss of the breast leaves patients with unspeakable, hidden pain. Their life challenges extend far beyond “hair loss” and “survival.”
“After being diagnosed with breast cancer, I persuaded myself to accept reality and actively cooperate with the doctors for surgery. The operation was quite successful, and I thought I had survived the most difficult hurdle, but the doctor told me that this was not the end; it was just the beginning.” Patient Xue Yun once said. At incarey’s Breast Care Center, you are no longer seen as someone below the normal baseline in the eyes of others. You deserve to be seen, your confusion deserves timely guidance, and your anxiety deserves prompt relief...
This is precisely the value of incarey’s offline breast cancer care centers, which regularly organize public welfare science lectures, anti-cancer experience sharing sessions, flower arrangement activities, book clubs, and other interactive events for breast cancer patients, bolstering their courage and confidence in embracing a new life. “Warmth” is another hallmark of incarey. Deeply rooted in the volatile realities of market competition, Liu Yunjiang remains steadfastly committed to a single direction: anchoring efforts in patient treatment outcomes to strive for “value-based healthcare.”
While diligently “solving problems” for patients, incarey has also been invisibly addressing the challenges faced by physicians and pharmaceutical companies. For a long time, unbalanced resource development has been a persistent ailment in China’s healthcare sector. Due to the dispersed patient population across the country and information asymmetry, physicians at top-tier tertiary hospitals in first-tier cities are unable to precisely reach patients. They lack the capacity for continuous follow-up and efficient management of chronic and special diseases for patients who return to second- and third-tier cities for follow-up visits, thereby failing to obtain accurate clinical data. Furthermore, because patients are scattered nationwide, pharmaceutical companies cannot establish connections with patients through traditional physician-facing and retail channels. This makes it particularly difficult to effectively manage medication adherence, and even when patients discontinue treatment, the reasons cannot be traced.
To achieve precise user traffic and create value chain benefits, incarey has developed multiple self-media IPs and covered all internet marketing channels. Its established full-course disease management system covers modules such as early consultation, patient guidance, early-to-mid-stage drug therapy, later-stage surgical treatment, medication during the recovery period, and post-operative follow-up. In this process, pharmaceutical companies have established direct touchpoints with products and patients. Additionally, the company has formed an alliance of academic experts across various disciplines, feeding clinical follow-up data back to doctors to support the improvement of their medical skills and professional academic capabilities.
After years of exploration and practice, incarey has established comprehensive vertical disease-specific service systems across multiple key clinical departments, securing exclusive access to resources such as top-tier specialists, a large base of precisely identified patients, and prescription supply chains. This year, its various vertical disease pipelines have entered a harvest phase, with significant growth in both user volume and revenue. By focusing intensively on specialized diseases, incarey has built a robust competitive moat. Meanwhile, incarey is also stepping up its efforts in digital therapeutics. Liu Yunjiang pointed out that digital therapeutics can better realize their value when supported by professional service systems for chronic disease management. With a clear understanding of patient pain points and value propositions in prevention, treatment, and the management of chronic and special diseases, incarey can leverage AI tool development to deliver superior digital therapeutic products, thereby enhancing treatment efficiency and improving patient outcomes.
This Series C financing round will lay a solid foundation for the next phase of rapid development at incarey. Jiang Xiaodong, Managing Partner at Changling Capital and an existing shareholder of incarey, stated that the healthcare industry has undergone tremendous changes over the past five years, with the core of these changes being the maximization of patient benefits. Since its inception, incarey has consistently built its core service capabilities around patients, establishing a vertical patient management service platform that focuses on specialized disease areas. The platform brings together top-tier experts nationwide and innovative treatment solutions to create greater value for patients. As healthcare reforms deepen, incarey is poised for accelerated growth, continuously expanding the scope and depth of its services to enable more patients to benefit from improved treatment outcomes and higher-quality care.
“With the wind at my back, I ascend to the azure skies.” Liu Yunjiang is already clear on the next chapter for incarey: “In the future, incarey will pursue integration and a public listing to build a new multi-specialty ecosystem in the field of chronic and special diseases.”
Note: To protect patient privacy, "Xue Yun" is a pseudonym.