No.1 Caregiver: Smart Upgrade 3.0 – A Preliminary Exploration of Militarized Management in Internet-Plus Elderly Care

The elderly are a vulnerable population. The caregiving industry is a traditional “people-to-people” sector, and care requires heartfelt communication.

Beijing Seven Heart Cloud Technology Co., Ltd., established in 2015, pioneered the “Seven-Heart Care” concept. It is committed to providing professional “in-home nursing services” for the elderly and offering customized solutions based on their needs, striving to achieve top-tier service quality and become the premier caregiving provider.

No. 1 Caregiver leverages internet thinking to build a health big data cloud platform, connecting key nodes of online nursing services and addressing elderly care issues through network connectivity. No. 1 Caregiver offers three care models—Daily Care, Monthly Care, and Periodic Care—allowing care recipients to choose freely and pay on demand.

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that, to date, Yihao Hugong has served over 100,000 families, with more than 200 in-house caregivers and approximately 2,000 platform-affiliated caregivers.

Enhancing the professional competence of nursing staff and strengthening their supervision are key to ensuring service quality.

In terms of personnel selection, No. 1 Caregiver first conducts a thorough review of caregivers’ basic information, with a particular focus on screening for any prior misconduct or adverse records. Only after passing real-name authentication can candidates proceed to the next stage. Notably, in response to the national poverty alleviation policy, No. 1 Caregiver has established training bases at multiple nursing schools and facilitated the employment placement of individuals from impoverished regions.

To enhance the professional competence of caregivers, No. 1 Caregiver has introduced advanced Japanese long-term care concepts and techniques, engaging Japanese nursing experts to conduct training in China. All nursing staff are required to complete over 108 hours of training in caregiving, etiquette, communication, and psychology, and must pass assessments before commencing work. In practice, No. 1 Caregiver provides targeted, cyclical training for individual caregivers based on client feedback. Nursing instructors offer 24/7 online remote guidance, while experts conduct regular one-on-one coaching, continuously improving the professionalism of care services.

No. 1 Caregiver’s care staff are divided into two categories: in-house caregivers (Cycle Care) and platform-based caregivers (Monthly Care, Daily Care). To ensure service quality, No. 1 Caregiver adopts militarized management, employs professional management instructors, implements a tiered ranking system, and maintains a reasonable promotion framework—caregivers can advance through successive levels by completing training and passing examinations, thereby enhancing caregiver retention.

By connecting all aspects of elderly care through an online network, caregivers are incorporated into digital supervision. “Yihao Hugong” (No. 1 Caregiver) uses the internet to oversee care workers, determining their locations via mobile phones and then reasonably planning routes and monitoring itineraries based on LBS (Location-Based Services). Upon arriving at the elder’s home, the care worker confirms service delivery and submits it for review. After service completion, dedicated customer service representatives from “Yihao Hugong” conduct follow-up calls to record evaluations.

From the current perspective, user pain points in the nursing field include not only safety and professionalism issues but also challenges related to demand matching and cost-effectiveness.

The core competitiveness of No. 1 Caregiver lies in its systematic product and service capabilities. Leveraging an internet-based platform, No. 1 Caregiver provides on-demand access, offering “Daily Care,” “Monthly Care,” and “Periodic Care” to address short-term emergency needs, long-term home care requirements, and scheduled interventional services, respectively:

Tian Tian Hu offers daily-rate services to address users’ “three urgent needs”: emergency care, temporary on-demand caregiving, and the urgent search for quality caregivers.

Monthly care is billed on a monthly basis and demonstrates effective outcomes in daily living assistance, postoperative rehabilitation, and chronic disease companionship.

Cyclical care is priced per item or package, and can assist with medical care, mobility, cleaning, and emergencies.

In terms of specific services, “No. 1 Caregiver” offers more detailed care. In addition to daily grooming, position changes, sponge baths, assistance with meals and medication, and helping the elderly engage in physical activities, it also provides auxiliary therapeutic and psychological support services such as prevention and care for common diseases, assistance with follow-up visits, and companionship through conversation, thereby delivering more attentive and professional services to individuals with special needs.

Notably, its package model features six service modules that can be freely combined. Meanwhile, users who opt for bundled services can enjoy certain discounts, offering a high cost-performance ratio.

Wu Jiang stated that No. 1 Caregiver is not currently pursuing large-scale expansion, but rather aims to refine and specialize its services. No. 1 Caregiver hopes to empower the entire elderly care industry chain with internet thinking by launching a “Service+” model.

At the “top level,” No. 1 Caregiver collaborates with Beijing Tonghe and PICC (People’s Insurance Company of China) to provide insurance coverage for long-term care costs and services, primarily targeting individuals who have lost their ability to perform activities of daily living due to aging or illness, thereby addressing payment challenges for some users.

In terms of service, No. 1 Caregiver leverages the flat management structure of its internet platform to actively promote industrial collaboration, such as partnering with companies like Ayibang, Guoan Community, and Chunyu Doctor.

This August, No. 1 Caregiver also partnered with Yihu Daojia to integrate “medical care + professional companionship” into a unified service, addressing both the difficulties elderly patients face in accessing medical care and the challenges families encounter when balancing work commitments with the need for non-professional nanny care.

No. 1 Caregiver achieves industrial synergy and ecosystem building through resource integration and complementary advantages, enabling its elderly care services to extend beyond the traditional scope of caregiving and achieve broader service diffusion.

Currently, the project is undergoing Series A financing.