Huano Zhisheng and Yikang Damei Merge to Form China's Livongo for Digital Metabolic Disease Management

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that Sichuan Huanuo Zhisheng Health Technology Co., Ltd. (“Huanuo Zhisheng”), a company specializing in digital diabetes management, and Beijing Yikang Damei Technology Co., Ltd. (“Yikang Damei”), a digital weight management enterprise, announced on November 1, 2020, the successful completion of their merger. Kaicheng Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor for this M&A transaction.

Following the merger, the two parties have integrated their respective advantageous resources in clinical research, technology development, patient management, and market expansion. SUGRQ has become a company offering two deeply digitalized disease management solutions for diabetes and weight control. Its strategic layout closely mirrors that of Livongo, the U.S. giant in chronic disease management, by establishing a development pathway that expands from diabetes care to weight management and other solutions. Poised to become China’s Livongo, SUGRQ is set to usher in a new era of digital diabetes management.

SUGRQ is an innovative enterprise dedicated to digital diabetes management. Its flagship digital product, RuiKongTang™, empowers patients to achieve sustained behavioral changes and access precise treatment plans by providing connected devices, professional digital tools, and 24/7 intelligent guidance and support. SUGRQ’s proprietary digital management solution features robust data aggregation capabilities, enabling the collection of data across six key dimensions, including physiological metrics, lifestyle factors, and behavioral patterns. The backend system continuously monitors patient data and, leveraging extensive clinical rules, delivers data insights along with therapeutic and behavioral interventions.

SUGRQ has created a novel therapeutic experience for diabetes patients and established a closed-loop ecosystem connecting hospitals, specialists, and patients. Through collaborations with leading medical institutions based on real-world studies, it has achieved significant clinical outcomes. Currently, SUGRQ has successfully secured dozens of paying hospital clients, with the number of paying patients growing monthly to reach thousands, positioning itself as a rising star in the digital diabetes management sector for successful commercial monetization.

Yikang Damei was founded by a multidisciplinary team with an average of over 10 years of experience in the field of weight management. Through remote guidance, it helps individuals with obesity manage their weight, aiming to prevent and control obesity-related metabolic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and polycystic ovary syndrome.

In its early stages, Yikang Damei prioritized scientific rigor, in-depth R&D, granular data analysis, and innovative concepts. It successively collaborated with numerous renowned medical institutions, including Peking Union Medical College Hospital, the 301 Hospital (PLA General Hospital), Peking University First Hospital, Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital of Capital Medical University, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, and Tianjin First Central Hospital, to conduct relevant research. Its proprietary “Multidisciplinary Structured Education Program for Patients with Obesity” centers on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), integrating medicine, psychology, exercise science, and nutrition. By combining cognitive education with behavioral training in a complementary manner, and leveraging expert-led education alongside daily consultant interventions, the program removes barriers to behavior change, enhances adherence, and facilitates effective weight management, making it the most professional digital weight management solution in China.

According to statistics, China has 120 million people with diabetes, 150 million with prediabetes, and 100 million with obesity. The combined number of individuals who are obese or overweight has reached an astonishing total. Obesity breeds a myriad of diseases and is particularly inextricably linked to metabolic disorders.

Liu Hongdou, Founder and CEO of SUGRQ, stated, “Diabetes and obesity are the two most overlooked ‘epidemics’ in modern society. These two chronic conditions are closely linked; obesity is a major risk factor for various metabolic disorders, and a significant proportion of individuals with diabetes are also overweight or obese. Management strategies for diabetes and weight can be applied to all patients with chronic metabolic diseases. The merger between SUGRQ and Yikang Damei will generate strategic synergies where the combined impact is far greater than the sum of its parts.”

Liu Hongdou also highlighted the value in three aspects:

1. Client Synergy: SUGRQ provides digital diabetes management solutions for medical institutions and physicians. While each client typically requires an extended period of communication and development, we can now rapidly deploy obesity management solutions for established partners. Furthermore, among existing patients with diabetes or prediabetes, we recommend weight management programs to suitable candidates. Scientific weight loss can significantly enhance patients’ physical function and partially restore islet cell function, thereby greatly improving therapeutic outcomes for diabetic patients. This client synergy also drives rapid revenue growth.

Second, Professional Enhancement: Medical management services have always been scientific and rigorous. SUGRQ and Yikang Damei each possess strong disciplinary professional teams in their respective fields of expertise. Following the merger, they will form a multidisciplinary expert team comprising dozens of professionals, covering medicine, nutrition, psychology, behavioral intervention, and other specialized disciplines. This expert team will drive the continuous innovation and research and development of both service solutions, ensuring sustained industry leadership.

Third, technological integration. The core technology of SUGRQ’s digital diabetes management platform is a personalized intervention platform for metabolic diseases, empowered by machine learning and continuously refined through real-world data, with its intelligent capabilities steadily improving over time. Meanwhile, Yikang Damei’s Chunfeng Weifu Platform is dedicated to scientific research, enabling deeper insights into patient behavior patterns through multidisciplinary professional assessments and patient data capture. The digital platform technologies of the two entities are complementary; they will undergo integrated upgrades in the future to build a big data- and AI-driven digital chronic disease management platform centered on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This platform will cover the management and research of multiple chronic conditions, achieving the vision of “multi-conditions, one platform.”

Wang Huanran, Founder and CEO of Yikang Damei, will serve as a Director and General Manager of the merged company. He stated, “The combination with SUGRQ is a perfect match. SUGRQ’s capability in expanding through professional channels will enable Yikang’s weight management solutions to benefit more customers at a faster pace. Meanwhile, SUGRQ’s digital technologies will help us reduce the service costs of our solutions, laying the foundation for scaled management. We are full of expectations for the development following this merger, and both parties are certain to create a more promising future in the field of digital chronic disease management!”

Pan Yugui, Project Leader at Kaicheng Capital, stated: “First of all, congratulations to SUGRQ and Yikang Damei on their successful merger. The merged SUGRQ has become the industry’s first digital chronic disease management platform featuring two major solutions, establishing a closed-loop ecosystem connecting hospitals, experts, patients, and manufacturers. It is poised to become China’s Livongo.”

WinX Capital is a leading investment bank in China’s healthcare sector. Five members of its founding team hold Ph.D. degrees in Global Finance from the PBC School of Finance at Tsinghua University, and its frontline team boasts an average of over 10 years of experience in management, investment, and mergers and acquisitions, with cumulative transaction values exceeding RMB 30 billion. Headquartered in Beijing and Shanghai, WinX Capital serves more than 3,000 active institutional investors and industrial conglomerates.