Healoonow Files for IPO: Reconstructing Traditional Chinese Medicine Consumption from an Overseas Foundation

“James, a 28-year-old Chinese-American man in the eastern United States, experienced relief from symptoms of an ear cartilage tumor that had plagued him for over six months after two months of traditional Chinese medicine treatment.” Gao Yuan, founder of Healoonow, shared this case with us.

In 2018, James was diagnosed with an auricular chondroma at Duke University Medical Center in the United States. After conservative treatment proved ineffective, he decided to give it a try and turned to Healoonow, a newly launched traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) health service platform.

Healoonow recommended Yang Guohua, a nationally renowned senior TCM practitioner and Capital Famous TCM Doctor based on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, for him to conduct video consultations and receive medication prescriptions via the internet.

After just three days of taking traditional Chinese medicine, James’s condition showed marked improvement; by early March 2019, his tumor had shrunk significantly.

James is not the only lucky one.

As a leading internet-based TCM health service brand dedicated to overseas users, Healoonow has rapidly established a complete closed-loop online consultation process within two years of its launch. Covering major countries with significant Chinese diaspora populations, including the United States, Canada, South Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Singapore, it has amassed hundreds of thousands of registered users.

During this period, Healoonow has evolved from its initial focus on online TCM consultations to gradually establish a new closed-loop ecosystem for TCM health consumption, centered around the core business pillars of “medical care” and “wellness.”

“We are not simply moving traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) online; rather, we aim to establish new consumption standards and reshape the industrial value of TCM,” said Gao Yuan, founder of Healoonow.

An Overview of China’s Internet Healthcare Market: As major tech giants deepen their strategic presence, first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou have long become red oceans, while the once “blue ocean” markets at the prefecture and county levels are gradually losing their untapped advantage.

However, starting from overseas and taking root there is a new path that Gao Yuan inadvertently forged.

In 2016, Gao Yuan was also employed at a well-known public relations firm, providing services to multiple multinational corporations and frequently traveling between China and the United States for work.

In 2016, Gao Yuan fell ill while in the United States. As a “heavy” consumer of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), her first instinct was to consult a TCM practitioner. However, she found that overseas there was a scarcity of renowned TCM experts and a relative lack of Chinese herbal medicine resources, ultimately forcing her to return to China for treatment.

This “troublesome” medical experience sparked Gao Yuan’s interest in the overseas development of traditional Chinese medicine, and after in-depth research, he discovered a gold mine within it.

According to the data from the blue book "Report on the Global Chinese Diaspora (2020)," the cumulative number of Chinese overseas immigrants had reached 10.7 million by 2020. As a traditional culture with distinct Chinese characteristics, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is widely recognized by overseas Chinese communities, creating substantial demand for TCM services. However, access to renowned physicians and high-quality herbal medicines remains limited locally, while traveling back to China for medical treatment entails prohibitive costs and significant information asymmetry.

Most critically, this opportunity-rich market remains in a valuable vacuum state.

The reason lies in the fact that the overseas market for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is small and fragmented, yet demands high pharmaceutical quality, placing it in an awkward position where “large enterprises disregard it, while small companies are incapable of handling it.”

“Compared with the domestic market, overseas markets are more like a ‘lower-tier market’ for the traditional Chinese medicine industry,” said Gao Yuan.

In 2018, Healoonow was officially established and launched in the United States.

Leveraging its in-depth understanding of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) industry, precise grasp of user markets, and robust capability in cross-border resource integration, Healoonow rapidly consolidated the TCM industrial chain and established a modern TCM health service platform serving hundreds of thousands of users.

To enter overseas markets, the first thing Healoonow must do is upgrade consumer perceptions of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and introduce innovative approaches.

According to Gao Yuan’s analysis, the overseas medical tourism market is dominated by Western medicine. While users’ pain points related to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) demonstrate high conversion potential, their desire for ancillary benefits remains price-sensitive. This has prompted Healoonow to gain a deeper understanding of consumers’ core pain points, rather than simply replicating domestic demand models in overseas markets.

After repeated trial and error, they concluded that only by transforming the obscure and abstruse theories of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) into products and services that are “easy to understand” and “convenient to use” can they stimulate users’ willingness to consume TCM offerings, thereby driving retention, repeat purchases, and word-of-mouth promotion.

Therefore, in terms of operations, Healoonow places greater emphasis on establishing consumption standards for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and innovating its business model; in terms of talent structure, it demonstrates characteristics of internationalization, specialization, and cross-disciplinary diversification.

Healoonow’s team comprises not only top-tier renowned physicians, including National-Level Senior TCM Masters and studios dedicated to the inheritance of National Famous TCM Practitioners, but also high-caliber professionals across various fields such as TCM clinical practice, computer science, biopharmaceuticals, and communications. According to Gao Yuan, most members of its core team are graduates of top U.S. universities and have work experience at world-renowned enterprises, bringing extensive cross-border operational expertise.

“Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is fundamentally a health service,” said Gao Yuan. The core philosophy of TCM is “achieving balance and harmony.” In simple terms, it aims to prevent illness by maintaining the body’s equilibrium through daily regulation.

Guided by this philosophy, Healoonow has not limited itself to simple online medical consultation services via the internet; instead, it is dedicated to building a new closed-loop industry for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that equally emphasizes medical care and health maintenance, with health consumption as its core concept.

Healoonow’s “Medical” services encompass information services focused on preventive healthcare and wellness, breaking down information asymmetry; algorithm-driven video consultations that recommend the best TCM practitioners based on symptoms; H-Steward for post-consultation management; an e-commerce platform for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) products; and a TCM Consumption Research Center.

Healoonow’s “Nourishment” initiative primarily explores how Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) services can cater to healthy populations and young consumers, establish new consumption standards, and reshape the value of the TCM industry.

Due to differences in cultural backgrounds and theoretical systems, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is defined overseas as alternative or complementary medicine. In the U.S. market, Chinese herbal medicines are also predominantly circulated as dietary supplements.

“Therefore, in terms of policy and market conditions, companies can operate in a relatively lenient environment to pursue innovative exploration,” said Gao Yuan.

Currently, Healoonow has established a clear commercial monetization model and possesses strong profitability conversion capabilities through its three business lines: remote consultations, online cloud pharmacy, and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) family doctor health management information services.

Gao Yuan revealed that Healoonow will next focus on both market expansion and business development: on the market front, it aims to reach 1 million registered users within two years, with its presence covering the ten countries with the largest concentrations of overseas Chinese.

On the business front, Healoonow will continue to invest in overseas traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) supply chains, the incubation of TCM practitioner key opinion leaders (KOLs), and the optimization of new consumer trends in TCM.

Gao Yuan stated that Healoonow will continue to adhere to its “user-centric” philosophy, restructure the consumption ecosystem of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) health services based on mobile internet technologies, and connect TCM with global users. The company also aims to establish a world-class TCM health consumer brand through sustained innovation and exploration, thereby contributing to the internationalization of TCM.

(Note: To protect patient privacy, “James” is a pseudonym.)