Nuohui Health Secures Tens of Millions in Series A Funding Led by Legend Star and BV Baidu Ventures

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that NUDHUI MEDICAL, an innovative provider of medical payment and insurance services, announced today the completion of its Series B financing round. The round was led by Legendstar Capital, with participation from Baidu Ventures. The funds will be primarily used to expand the business development and operational services teams, as well as to establish both online and offline channels.

NUDHUI MEDICAL, founded in November 2018 and headquartered in Shanghai, is a professional provider of innovative medical payment and insurance solutions. It offers commercial health insurance and payment solutions for major diseases, including medication reimbursement, efficacy guarantees, and medication assurance, aiming to reduce patients’ out-of-pocket expenses and improve medication accessibility and adherence.

Under China’s basic medical insurance system, patients often bear a high proportion of out-of-pocket expenses. Among these, the financial burden imposed by major diseases significantly constrains many patients’ treatment progress and prognostic outcomes. Statistics show that nearly 80 million existing patients with major diseases in China have incurred over RMB 700 billion in out-of-pocket costs for medications and medical services.

The coverage gaps in basic medical insurance have given rise to a massive market for innovative healthcare payment solutions, attracting numerous insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and medical device companies. These stakeholders are attempting to build service platforms that leverage insurance to empower pharmaceutical companies, distribution channels, and other healthcare resource providers, aiming to achieve volume-based price reductions and help patients control medical expenses.

However, the total out-of-pocket medical expenses for patients in China continue to rise. The contradiction between critically ill patients’ demand for cost containment in major diseases and the market’s lack of products that truly guarantee treatment while reducing costs has left a deep impression on Liu Xiaojie, founder of NUDHUI MEDICAL. By choosing to enter the market through coverage for major disease treatment at this juncture, NUDHUI MEDICAL aims to change this status quo by innovating the design framework of healthcare payment solutions.

Unlike traditional models that design insurance products first and then incorporate drugs and treatment services based on policy terms, NUDHUI MEDICAL takes disease treatment itself as the starting point for insurance product design. Leveraging professional medical expertise and extensive clinical experience, we precisely address patients’ core needs to reduce medical costs while ensuring treatment efficacy.

Liu Xiaojie argues that commercial health insurance products designed purely on financial theory often fail to genuinely reduce patients’ medical burdens. On the contrary, because such insurance is typically structured as consumer-grade products, the inclusion of non-essential medications or treatment regimens in coverage terms may actually increase patients’ treatment costs.

NUDHUI MEDICAL is guided by the principles of ensuring treatment coverage and reducing medical costs. In product design, its development team selectively integrates essential medical resources for disease treatment based on a scientific understanding of diseases and healthcare, optimizing the integration of these resources. “We act more as a bridge between insurance companies and pharmaceutical firms, helping to form a complete closed loop within the entire healthcare system.”

Liu Xiaojie believes that integrating professional and scientific understanding of diseases into insurance design will become a new driving force for future medical insurance.

The fundamental transformation in product design philosophy demands exceptionally high levels of combined medical and financial expertise from both designers and executors, a realm where Liu Xiaojie’s prior professional experience has played a pivotal role. After graduating from university, Liu worked at a consulting firm, providing market solutions for multinational pharmaceutical companies and thereby gaining unique insights into the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to founding NUDHUI MEDICAL, Liu served Roche, a multinational pharmaceutical giant, for nearly eight years, overseeing the launch and market expansion in China of several of Roche’s blockbuster oncology drugs.

“The market logic required to reach patients varies across different types of drugs,” Liu Xiaojie told VCBeat. His experience at Roche Pharma has enabled him to accurately pinpoint the market pain points in oncology therapeutics, “which is also a key reason why NUDHUI MEDICAL has chosen to focus on oncology drugs.”

Furthermore, Liu Xiaojie has assembled a highly multidisciplinary team with dual expertise and resources in both healthcare and insurance. On one hand, most members of the NUDHUI MEDICAL team come from healthcare resource providers and possess experience in the pharmaceutical industry, enabling efficient access to core medical resources required for disease treatment. On the other hand, some team members have previously led core product development at insurance institutions, ensuring that the insurance products offered by NUDHUI MEDICAL are backed by sound financial models and reasonable policy terms.

Leveraging its unique product design and team advantages, NUDHUI MEDICAL has garnered widespread favor from social capital. The company secured its first round of financing at inception, and the second round, concluded less than six months later, was finalized within just one month.

VCBeat has noted that all investors chosen by NUDHUI MEDICAL have demonstrated outstanding performance in healthcare investments. Taking Legendstar Capital and Baidu Ventures as examples, they possess deep and unique insights into the healthcare industry and command abundant medical resources. Liu Xiaojie told VCBeat that, as NUDHUI MEDICAL is still in its early stages of development, the company aims to access more industrial resources through capital partnerships. “We have formed a relationship of mutual selection with our investors,” he said.

Mr. Wang Yi, Investment Director at Legendstar Capital, stated, “Innovative healthcare payment models in China are still in their nascent stage. Despite repeated trials and errors, the market pain point of high out-of-pocket medical costs for patients persists. NUDHUI MEDICAL has filled the gap in the market for truly effective innovative healthcare payment solutions. On one hand, founder Liu Xiaojie’s multidisciplinary professional background ensures that NUDHUI MEDICAL can effectively deliver solutions to pharmaceutical companies, thereby better reaching target patients. On the other hand, NUDHUI MEDICAL’s insurance design team was among the first in China to pioneer innovations in healthcare payment, bringing extensive experience and genuine protection to patients.”

Mr. Ren Bobing, Vice President of Baidu Ventures, pointed out, “NUDHUI MEDICAL demonstrates strong patient engagement capabilities. By leveraging real-world data and integrated diagnostic and treatment service packages to empower patients, it will provide a high-quality commercialization channel for innovative specialty drugs and medical testing products in the future. Furthermore, the company has transformed conventional approaches to commercial health insurance design, serving as a robust complement to medical payment services. Founder Liu Xiaojie possesses strong business acumen and strategic thinking, along with an efficient and decisive management style. His keen sensitivity to data and strong product innovation capabilities, aligned with the current backdrop of volume-based procurement, make this a project highly favored by Baidu Ventures.”

Legendstar, founded in 2008, currently manages five angel investment funds with a total capital exceeding RMB 2 billion and has invested in nearly 300 projects. As the early-stage investment and incubation arm of Legend Holdings, Legendstar leverages over three decades of entrepreneurial experience and resource accumulation from the Legend ecosystem to provide entrepreneurs with distinctive services combining angel investment and in-depth incubation, serving as a “super angel” by their side.

Among these, angel investment primarily focuses on three major sectors: artificial intelligence, TMT, and healthcare, with active strategic deployments in frontier areas such as intelligent robotics, internet-enabled transformation of traditional industries, biotechnology, and medical devices. Meanwhile, its deep-incubation initiative manages and operates the “Entrepreneur CEO Intensive Training Program,” providing professional, practice-oriented pro bono entrepreneurship training to a broad base of entrepreneurs.

Baidu Ventures (BV) is an independent venture capital firm initiated by Baidu and managed by a professional team, with investors including Baidu and other leading industrial and financial institutions. BV currently manages three USD and RMB funds totaling $500 million, operating simultaneously in Beijing and San Francisco, and is committed to becoming a world-class VC in the AI era. BV has invested in nearly 30 companies domestically and internationally in the medical AI sector, covering areas such as AI-driven drug discovery, multi-omics testing, cutting-edge therapies, and AI-powered healthcare services.