EnQi Secures RMB 30 Million Series A Funding to Build an Integrated Online-Offline Tech-Driven Rehabilitation Service Platform for Children with Autism

VCBeat has learned that Enqi, a leading company specializing in rehabilitation for children with autism, recently completed a RMB 30 million Series A financing round. The round was led by Yuhong Capital, with participation from Boxing Capital.

Wang Wei, President of Enqi, stated that the funds from this round of financing will be allocated to two key areas. First, comprehensively develop the three core business segments—“Internet services, teacher training, and directly-operated chain centers”—to build a technology-driven rehabilitation ecosystem service platform. Second, support the professional enhancement and development of small and medium-sized institutions through methods such as professional licensing and output, while attracting more outstanding talent from both domestic and international markets.

Enqi was founded in February 2014 as a social innovation project incubated by Tsinghua x-lab. It is committed to leveraging “Internet Plus” to elevate the overall professional standards of the autism rehabilitation and education industry, thereby ensuring that every child with autism can access superior rehabilitation and educational services. To date, Enqi has established professional barriers in the autism rehabilitation sector through technology and the internet, solidifying its position among the leading tier of China’s pediatric rehabilitation industry.

How Did Ingcare Become the “Leader” in Autism Rehabilitation for Children? What Are Ingcare’s Next Steps? What Did Yuhong Capital and Boxing Capital See in Ingcare? With these questions in mind, VCBeat conducted exclusive interviews with Wang Wei, founder of Ingcare; Fang Wei, Senior Vice President of Investment at Yuhong Capital; and Zhang Lan, Partner at Boxing Capital, to hear their insights.

Autism (also known as autistic disorder) has been listed by the World Health Organization as a global societal issue that severely impacts children's health. According to the 2014 "Report on the Development Status of Autism in China," the incidence of autism in China is on the rise, with the estimated number of individuals with autism exceeding 10 million, including over 3 million children aged 0–14 years. In recent years, autism has begun to shift from being considered a rare disease to an epidemic.

Wang Wei stated that discovery, diagnosis, assessment, rehabilitation, and social integration typically constitute the developmental trajectory for children with autism. From the day parents learn of their child’s autism diagnosis, they must engage with the concepts of “Education” and “Rehabilitation” for the rest of their lives. Following his chance encounter with autism, Wang Wei, too, has become someone committed to navigating this journey for a lifetime.

In 2009, during an offline event for human-computer interaction projection devices, Wang Wei was approached by the mother of a child with autism, who excitedly told him, “This is the first time my child has voluntarily played with other children.” After the event, the mother’s eagerness to purchase the device, followed by her look of disappointment upon learning the price, left Wang Wei deeply unsettled. This marked Wang Wei’s first encounter with families affected by autism, as well as his initial engagement with the condition itself.

Wang Wei thus embarked on a long-term battle against “autism.” Prior to 2015, he had been exploring rehabilitation models for preschool-aged children, attempting to leverage smart wristbands, robots, tablet-based games, and other approaches to facilitate their rehabilitative therapy, but with limited success. “At that time, we were approaching the diagnosis and treatment of autism from a layperson’s perspective, completely unaware of the critical pain points in the autism rehabilitation market,” Wang Wei stated. Market research later revealed that the most significant challenge in autism rehabilitation therapy was the inadequacy of teaching staff, marked by a substantial disparity in professional competencies.

The Training of Teachers for Children with Autism Is Urgently Needed.

With a clear direction, Enqi has made rapid and steady progress. To date, Enqi has successfully established the largest institution in China’s special education sector, boasting the strongest training capacity and the highest number of trained teachers, through its systematic vocational training model. It has also built a high-level teaching and research team, comprising international experts knowledgeable in autism intervention and treatment, as well as senior special education practitioners with over a decade of hands-on teaching experience.

Enqi has achieved integration and mutual success between internet-based and traditional institutions in the industry by leveraging an “online + offline” rehabilitation and education model for children with autism, bringing hope to families affected by autism.

Wang Wei told VCBeat that Enqi has established a complete business chain in the field of autism rehabilitation, forming three major business segments: internet services, teacher training, and directly-operated chains.

This platform consists of Enqi Cloud Classroom, VB-MAPP Assessment Assistant, Enqi Self-Media, and the Enqi Community APP.

Enqi Cloud Classroom’s services span online education, online assessment software, professional self-media, vertical communities, and online consultations. It is a platform designed to help teachers and parents acquire professional knowledge about autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and is recognized by the China Association of Rehabilitation for Disabled Persons as a pre-service training platform for autism teachers. Since its launch, Enqi Cloud Classroom has trained more than one-third of all ASD rehabilitation teachers in the industry.

VB-MAPP Assessment Assistant is an online software developed through secondary development of an authoritative international assessment system, capable of establishing a data framework for the abilities of children with autism and evaluating rehabilitation outcomes.

The Enqi Community APP provides a channel for online communication between parents and teachers, enabling synchronized access to data from teachers, children, parents, and institutions. In addition, the Enqi Special Education Platform and Panda Pediatrics are also part of Enqi’s internet product portfolio.

Since 2015, the Enqi brand has gained rapid traction. After bringing people together, Wang Wei began to consider how to directly address the challenges in autism education. Thus, offline services were put on the agenda.

Wang Wei believes that the primary essence of rehabilitation education is “industry standards.” During the rehabilitation process, data on the completion of phased goals serve as important criteria for measuring rehabilitation outcomes. Under this standard, Enqi has successively developed the “Pre-service Training Standards for Autism Rehabilitation Teachers,” the “IDEA Professional Talent Development System,” and the “Evaluation Standards for Rehabilitation Education of Children with Autism,” continuously promoting the establishment of an industry-wide standard system.

The rehabilitation and education market for children with autism is characterized by inelastic demand, significant growth potential, and strong social attributes. Enqi has developed the EIS three-stage curriculum system based on child development characteristics, offering Early Intensive Intervention (E), Inclusion Preparation (I), and School-based Inclusion (S) programs. This approach ensures seamless support across every stage of an autistic child’s development, bridging the gap between individual care and collective environments in current autism rehabilitation education, and helping more children genuinely integrate into society.

Enqi’s teacher training platform has become the largest provider of teacher training in the industry, thanks to its rigorous commitment to teaching quality and instructional techniques, and has secured an exclusive partnership with the Rehabilitation Association of the China Disabled Persons’ Federation. Wang Wei stated that Enqi’s teacher training platform aims to be the “Lanxiang Vocational School” plus “Tsinghua University” of the sector.

Establishing offline direct-operated rehabilitation centers is a crucial component of Enqi’s development of its offline services.

Enqi adopts a technology-driven business model and has formulated a development strategy of “technology empowerment” for its offline centers. It has opened three “IDEA Rehabilitation Centers” in Beijing, taking the lead in standardizing teaching research and instruction. Additionally, Enqi has built a technical platform encompassing various services such as parent engagement, teacher management, and store operations to support instructional management and deliver precise, personalized services to every family.

Children aged 2 to 7 who are diagnosed with or suspected of having autism are the target clientele of IDEA Rehabilitation Center, the offline direct-operated brand of Enqi. Enqi has independently developed and validated multiple systems, including its curriculum framework, talent development program, teaching materials and aids system, software support infrastructure, and institutional management system.

Wang Wei revealed that Enqi’s fourth “IDEA Rehabilitation Center” will open in Shenzhen by the end of this year. After stabilizing its operations in first-tier cities, the company will expand into second- and third-tier cities through “technology empowerment.”

Wang Wei stated that following this round of financing, Enqi will undergo a strategic upgrade, expanding its three core business lines while opening more directly operated offline rehabilitation centers and recruiting additional top-tier talent.

When discussing EnQi’s appeal to investment institutions, Wang Wei highlighted three main aspects:

First, Enqi’s empowerment capabilities. Enqi holds a dominant position in the industry in terms of the number of training sessions conducted and the size of its teaching staff. By drawing on the teaching methodologies of Xueersi Online School, it inspires teachers to deepen their understanding of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). With the largest coverage of teachers across the sector, Enqi leads the industry in driving professional development. Additionally, Enqi has developed a comprehensive data tracking system that records the entire rehabilitation process for children, both at institutional centers and at home. This system lays the data foundation for subsequent personalized treatment plans and has already accumulated data from 17,000 children with ASD.

Second, Enqi’s three core business segments are complementary, reinforcing stable growth. Its online internet community and platform development ensure a steady stream of customer acquisition; its teacher training product system cultivates high-quality talent, strengthening brand reputation; and its offline directly-operated centers provide personalized one-on-one services, delivering rehabilitation interventions with evident therapeutic outcomes to enhance brand visibility.

Third, EnQi focuses on serving preschool children with autism, delivering significant social value. Unlike traditional offline pediatric rehabilitation centers, EnQi is driven by technology, combining self-operated services with professional licensing and expertise export. Investors can achieve substantial financial returns.

Yuhong Capital and Boxing Capital are the investors in this financing round.

Fang Wei, Senior Vice President of Investment at Yuhong Capital, stated that the current pain point in China’s autism rehabilitation industry is the lack of high-quality rehabilitation training services, which has kept service prices prohibitively high and made it unaffordable for most families of children with autism to sustain such care. Addressing this pain point was the primary motivation behind Yuhong Capital’s decision to invest in Enqi.

Fang Wei stated that Enqi differs from traditional chain service providers in the industry; it is an edtech company with strengths in content and curriculum development as well as technological innovation. Enqi operates China’s largest training platform for autism rehabilitation therapists and maintains the country’s largest assessment database for children with autism, making it the most technologically advanced and professionally capable institution in China for research and rehabilitation education for childhood autism. In the future, the company can leverage its advantages in content, technology, and data to comprehensively empower families and institutions supporting children with autism, thereby addressing the industry’s widespread supply-demand imbalance on a large scale.

It is worth noting that Ms. Zhang Lan, a partner at Boxing Capital, also serves as a partner at Tsinghua Ginkgo Medical Fund, the investor in Enqi’s angel round. When asked why she chose to invest in Enqi twice, Ms. Zhang stated:

Boxing Capital focuses on investments in the healthcare sector, with a strong bullish outlook on the maternal and child health segment, and has also made strategic investments in assisted reproduction and pediatric dental care companies. There is rigid demand for rehabilitation services for children with autism, yet the supply of high-quality services remains insufficient. Compared to the prevalence of autism rehabilitation therapy in the United States, there is still a significant gap in China; however, awareness and attention toward autism among parents and the general public are growing rapidly. Enqi empowers traditional rehabilitation with technology and introduces advanced international concepts. Since completing its angel round of financing in 2017, the company has achieved rapid growth, establishing an integrated online-and-offline curriculum system for autism rehabilitation in children as well as a teacher training system, thereby promoting the establishment of industry standards. “We believe Enqi will make even greater contributions to the overall development of the industry.”

Following this financing round, Yuhong Capital will leverage its accumulated resources in the healthcare and education sectors to continue providing Enqi with a range of post-investment services, including strategic repositioning, development strategy formulation, industry resource integration, and brand influence enhancement. Boxing Capital will also assist Enqi in areas such as talent acquisition and healthcare resource matchmaking. In this regard, Zhang Lan stated that Boxing Capital remains committed to being a long-term partner that grows alongside its portfolio companies.

Yuhong Capital is an early practitioner of the impact investing philosophy in China. Established in 2007, the firm explicitly adheres to a social value orientation, refraining from investing in industries and projects with high environmental and social risks, and is committed to operating as a socially responsible investment institution. Since 2012, Yuhong has adopted international general guidelines for impact investing, establishing investment principles that balance financial returns with social impact. It has progressively refined its investment criteria across four key sectors: health and elderly care, quality education, energy conservation and environmental protection, and inclusive finance. This has culminated in a foundational investment methodology that selects investment themes by first analyzing social issues.

Yuhong adheres to the concept of sustainable development, dedicated to investing in and nurturing outstanding domestic social enterprises and innovative entrepreneurial teams, promoting the creation and sharing of knowledge, wealth, and social resources.

Boxing Capital is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage healthcare investments, founded by partners with extensive experience in healthcare industry investing. Boxing Capital currently manages funds totaling nearly RMB 1 billion and has strategically invested in more than 30 innovative medical device and healthcare service companies with significant market potential. The firm’s limited partners include leading domestic fund-of-funds, healthcare entrepreneurs, and seasoned investors.

Boxing Capital has secured sustained support from investors and earned the long-term respect of entrepreneurs through its in-depth industry research, clear investment logic, and comprehensive post-investment management capabilities, firmly establishing itself as a long-term partner to China’s top-tier investors and entrepreneurs.