Yibai Technology Secures Tens of Millions of RMB in Series A Funding from HM Capital to Empower Pharma Digital Marketing Transformation

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that Beijing Medical Technology Co., Ltd. (“Medical Technology”), a company specializing in providing digital marketing transformation solutions for pharmaceutical and medical device enterprises, recently announced the completion of its tens-of-millions-yuan Series A financing round, with Huimei Capital as the investor.

HM Capital is a vertical fund within the Hillhouse Capital Group ecosystem, specializing in healthcare and medical investments. Leveraging Hillhouse Capital’s extensive footprint in the healthcare industry and the operational healthcare assets under the HM Medical Group, HM Capital adopts a multi-dimensional and comprehensive approach to investing in the healthcare ecosystem. Its mission is to facilitate the rapid growth of early-stage and growth-stage healthcare companies. Luo Rushu, CEO of HM Medical Group and Managing Partner of HM Capital, stated that Beijing Medical Technology has deeply cultivated the field of digital marketing for pharmaceutical companies. By empowering pharmaceutical and medical device enterprises with technology to accelerate their digital transformation and lead industry development, Beijing Medical Technology aligns closely with HM Capital’s philosophy. Furthermore, Beijing Medical Technology’s mission, “Making Healthcare Warmer,” resonates strongly with HM Capital’s advocacy of “Bringing Health to Everyone.”

Beijing Medical Technology, established in 2016, specializes in the deeply vertical B2B digital marketing sector for pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Leveraging its independently developed one-stop SaaS cloud service platform, it automatically generates exclusive digital marketing transformation platforms for pharmaceutical enterprises.

Gao Jianfei, founder of Beijing Medical Technology, stated: “Foreign pharmaceutical companies and foreign-invested pharmaceutical enterprises in China began extensively experimenting with digital marketing as early as 2013, with many establishing dedicated innovative marketing departments. In contrast, domestic pharmaceutical companies have only recently ventured into digital marketing, with many still exploring strategies and methods. In recent years, the introduction and implementation of a series of national policies have accelerated transformations in the pharmaceutical industry, making digital transformation a highly prominent concept within the sector. However, most current service providers are third-party platforms, which constitutes a major pain point for pharmaceutical enterprises. Considering both commercial security and data reutilization, no pharmaceutical company is willing to hand over its users, content, and data to third-party platforms.”

Precisely because pharmaceutical companies regard these data as core assets, they have an even greater need for their own dedicated platforms. Beijing Medical Technology empowers pharmaceutical enterprises to build their own digital marketing platforms through technological enablement. The SaaS model holds inherent advantages in terms of technical implementation, development cycle, and usage costs, making deployment easier and smoother.

Keep your eyes on the stars, but your feet on the ground. From an initial team of just over ten people to a current scale of nearly one hundred, and from cramped residential quarters to the present-day Wangjing Technology Park, Gao Jianfei has consistently maintained one habit: he requires not only the sales and operations teams, but also product, R&D, HR, and finance departments to have a deep understanding of MedBai’s business scenarios. At the monthly birthday celebrations, there is always a special segment where, while everyone enjoys cake, Gao Jianfei diligently interprets business scenarios and shares industry insights.

Innovation stems from users and is embodied in craftsmanship. For R&D professionals, only by putting themselves in the shoes of users, considering industry dynamics, and reflecting on practical usage can they create truly valuable products. As for a product itself, its features gain vitality only when contextualized within specific scenarios and tailored to targeted user groups.

Product Innovation, Born from Scenarios. All things follow their own laws of development, and the products of pharmaceutical and medical device companies also have their own life cycles.

Taking pharmaceuticals as an example, the drug lifecycle generally comprises four stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Different marketing scenarios must be aligned with each stage of the product lifecycle. Furthermore, as the industry user structure varies among pharmaceutical companies of different natures, the segmentation of marketing scenarios becomes particularly crucial.

By addressing the four core demands of “compliance, exclusivity, efficiency, and empowerment,” YiBai has developed over 30 application scenarios for pharmaceutical marketing, including departmental meetings, satellite symposia, case collection, and surgical demonstrations. This achieves comprehensive coverage of digital marketing scenarios for pharmaceutical and medical device enterprises, helping them accumulate content, data, and users—such as physicians, pharmacy staff, and patients—for long-term reuse. Using digital tools for academic promotion and marketing serves as a supplement to the traditional model of pharmaceutical representative visits. Leveraging its advantages of low cost and high efficiency, it better establishes an information communication platform between pharmaceutical companies and physicians. Pharmaceutical companies can leverage digital tools to consolidate resources and thereby build academic leadership.

Building a dedicated platform is merely the first step in an enterprise’s digital transformation. To achieve efficient academic promotion and a closed-loop marketing system, it is essential to integrate multiple functional modules, including organizational structure management, permission controls, task management, analytics, points/rewards systems, and e-commerce platforms. This integration enables enterprises to realize online presence across five key dimensions: organization, users, business operations, performance assessment, and transactions. Gao Jianfei stated, “True digital transformation should be closed-loop and leverage internet effects.”

Since its launch over a year ago, the Yibai SaaS Cloud Service Platform has signed contracts with more than 120 leading medical device and pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Sumitomo, Boston Scientific, Janssen, Tanabe, Daiichi Sankyo, Shuanghe, CSPC, Qilu, Beilu, Salubris, Zhenbaodao, and Kelun. Its operating revenue for 2019 is projected to exceed RMB 100 million, positioning it at the forefront of the industry.

Digital Marketing: A Long and Arduous Journey. Since 2015, the frequent introduction of new healthcare reform policies—such as the Consistency Evaluation, the Two-Invoice System, and the “4+7” Volume-Based Procurement program—has profoundly reshaped the landscape of the pharmaceutical industry. For pharmaceutical and medical device companies, traditional marketing models are facing severe challenges amid rising cost pressures, a dense regulatory environment, ongoing reforms within healthcare institutions, and increasing complexity in the overall medical market. Consequently, the digital transformation of pharmaceutical marketing has become an urgent imperative.

Data shows that China's total pharmaceutical sales amounted to RMB 2.2 trillion in 2018 and are projected to exceed RMB 5 trillion by 2025. Based on the 20% marketing expense ratio observed in mature markets such as the United States, pharmaceutical companies' marketing expenditures will surpass RMB 1 trillion. Currently, pharmaceutical marketing expenses are rapidly shifting from offline to online channels, and the digital transformation of pharmaceutical marketing is creating a market worth hundreds of billions of yuan. This niche segment began to experience substantial growth in late 2018. Since 2018, domestic pharmaceutical companies have significantly accelerated their online digitalization, presenting an opportunity to overtake foreign pharmaceutical companies in digital transformation. The rapid expansion of domestic pharmaceutical companies has been the greatest dividend for Beijing Medical Technology.

From a market perspective, pharmaceutical companies are exploring a diverse range of applications for digital tools. Some enterprises are building their own platforms, establishing communication channels such as websites, WeChat official accounts, and mobile apps, while others are collaborating with third-party platforms or adopting other innovative healthcare models. Although the practical promotion and implementation of digital transformation still face numerous problems and challenges, it undoubtedly represents a major future trend. The core of digital transformation in the pharmaceutical industry is to fundamentally reduce the cost of medical education and enhance the efficiency of academic promotion and marketing; meanwhile, it aims to establish an innovative ecosystem for academic marketing while returning to a focus on academic rigor.

Medicine is a highly rigorous and rational discipline, concerning human life and quality of life. Therefore, digital healthcare solutions must not only address immediate challenges but also fulfill the mission entrusted by the times.

Beijing Medical Technology has been certified as a Zhongguancun High-Tech Enterprise, obtained 16 software copyrights, and filed for recognition as a National High-Tech Enterprise. The company won the bid to provide video live streaming services for the Chinese Medical Association’s academic conferences and to operate a remote training platform for primary-care physicians. It is currently applying for a hardware patent for its “Remote Medical Imaging Connect” solution. Gao Jianfei stated that the new financing will be used not only for market expansion and building a tiered talent pipeline, but also for developing new products that enable incremental marketing, precision marketing, and closed-loop marketing solutions for pharmaceutical and medical device companies, with the aim of becoming China’s leading B2B service platform for the pharmaceutical and medical device industry within five years.