Xinli001 Secures Tens of Millions in Series B Funding to Expand Team and Enhance Premium Mental Health Products and Services

Recently, YiXinLi, a domestic psychological service platform, officially announced that it had secured tens of millions of yuan in Series B financing, with Fenghai Capital as the investor. According to VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat), the funds will be used for recruiting and training professional talent, constructing offline counseling facilities, and developing new products, further helping YiXinLi improve its service and product quality, gain more exposure, and enhance brand recognition.

Founded in 2011, YiXinLi (One Psychology) operates a diverse portfolio of services, including psychological counseling, instant emotional support, psychology courses, psychological assessments, Psychology FM, the IF Laboratory, and a Q&A community. Over the past eight years, the company has remained committed to providing timely and reliable solutions for individuals with psychological needs, while delivering professional, science-based psychological knowledge to mental health professionals, enthusiasts, and the general public.

Prior to this, YiXinLi had completed its Series A, Series A+, and Series A++ financing rounds in 2015, 2016, and 2017, respectively. The Series A investor was Northern Light Venture Capital; the Series A+ round was led by SAIF Partners Asia, with Northern Light Venture Capital participating as a follow-on investor; and the Series A++ round was funded by Toutou Shidao Fund. The cumulative amount raised has exceeded RMB 100 million.

Since the National Health and Wellness Conference in 2016 proposed to “strengthen fundamental research on mental health issues, conduct effective public education on mental health knowledge and psychological disorders, and standardize the development of mental health services such as treatment and psychological counseling,” various national functional departments have successively issued multiple guideline documents favorable to the development of the psychology industry. On the other hand, the “Overview of China’s New Consumption Era Development in 2018” shows that residents’ consumption levels in China have been rising year by year, with corresponding changes in consumption structure. As household consumption shifts from “subsistence-oriented” to “enjoyment-oriented,” the mental health industry is embracing a significant growth opportunity.

To meet the growing demand for mental health services among the Chinese population, YiXinLi has onboarded nearly 500 professional psychological counselors to provide user services. The company has independently developed more than 300 psychology courses, nearly 2,000 free online psychological assessments, and 165 paid professional assessments. Currently, the platform has over 22 million registered users, with paying customers spanning more than 90 countries and regions worldwide. In addition, YiXinLi continues to innovate by launching new products and features, including meditation apps, Q&A communities, book clubs, and tangible products based on psychological principles.

As early as August 2016, YiXinLi began building a professional and high-quality counseling service team. By June 2019, YiXinLi had provided psychological counseling services to over 200,000 clients, achieved a repurchase rate of nearly 55%, and met its target of 100% year-over-year growth for three consecutive years.

To date, Yi Xinli has developed a relatively mature mechanism for screening and managing counselors. In terms of counselor selection, Yi Xinli references European and American standards, evaluating candidates on multiple criteria including professional qualifications, educational background, cumulative case hours, completion of long-term training, and receipt of supervision from senior-level counselors. All applicants must undergo rigorous interviews conducted by an expert panel, with a final acceptance rate of less than 2%.

On the other hand, YiXinLi has also assembled a team of counseling consultants who all hold formal degrees in psychology. In addition to helping users select suitable psychological counselors, the team is responsible for addressing user feedback, monitoring the service quality of counselors, and providing users with attentive, full-cycle support.

According to Xie Haoran, Product Director, in the second half of 2019, YiXinLi will also establish a Professional Committee for Psychological Counseling. This committee will engage psychology professionals from major universities and institutions across China as third-party consultants to conduct regular competency assessments of YiXinLi-certified counselors and develop a robust ethical framework. Upholding client welfare as its primary priority, the initiative aims to continuously enhance the professional service standards of YiXinLi’s counseling services.

To further enhance the protection of bilateral privacy for both users and counselors, YiXinLi is fully committed to developing and refining an integrated system that combines “counselor selection,” “appointment scheduling,” “online audio-video counseling,” and “post-session feedback.” This enables users to complete the entire counseling process within the App without disclosing any personal information, placing user experience at the core of our service.

To meet the public’s increasingly diverse needs in psychology, Yi Xinli not only provides psychological counseling services but also offers general-audience psychology courses and professional training programs designed to enhance counselors’ competence.

Chen Lin, the project leader of the Public Psychology Course Program, stated that public attention to mental health has been increasing year by year. More and more people are seeking professional psychological knowledge to address issues such as managing negative emotions, marital and parent-child relationships, and personal growth. The courses offered by YiXinLi in collaboration with industry experts meet the public’s demand for self-growth and self-regulation through psychology.

According to platform data, as of June this year, nearly 10 million users have experienced the public psychology courses for free, and over 1 million users have paid to learn more about the application methods of psychological knowledge. Meanwhile, YiXinLi also provides third-party products and content services to B-end clients, having established in-depth cooperative relationships with content platforms such as Wu Xiaobo Channel, Zhihu, and Ximalaya.

On the other hand, YiXinLi is striving to build a training system for psychological counselors that balances professionalism and standardization, aiming to establish this system as the benchmark for entry-level training, professional development, and supervised growth of psychological counselors in China, thereby better helping the general public address psychological issues. YiXinLi has specially invited renowned professors, chief physicians, PhDs from prestigious universities both domestically and abroad, and mental health professionals with over ten years of counseling experience to plan and design its professional curriculum. Leveraging economies of scale, it offers these related professional courses at highly cost-effective prices to cultivate more excellent and highly mature psychological counselors in China.

According to Zeng Min, the head of the professional course program, more than 150,000 psychology enthusiasts and counselors have paid to enroll in specialized psychology courses, with a single hit course generating over RMB 4 million in revenue. In the first quarter of 2019 alone, revenue from professional courses increased by 109.18% year-on-year and 7.97% quarter-on-quarter, while the number of repeat purchasers rose by 46.2% year-on-year.

In addition to psychological counseling and psychology courses, YiXinLi is also exploring various formats to extend the reach of psychological knowledge and bring it closer to its users.

Since 2015, YiXinLi has launched psychological services, including professional paid online assessments and engaging recreational psychological tests, which have also been widely embraced by users. As of June 2019, YiXinLi’s assessment services had cumulatively served 2.5 million users, with a repurchase rate of 22%. Among these, the three major segments—relationships, health, and workplace—accounted for 76% of total sales. Chen Huishan, Assessment R&D Manager, stated that over the next five years, YiXinLi will develop assessments in more diverse fields, conduct deeper analysis of its assessment offerings, and provide users with more comprehensive solutions and services, aiming to achieve growth exceeding 150% this year.

In addition to psychological assessments, YiXinLi is also developing a wider range of innovative products grounded in psychological knowledge to meet the diverse needs of its audience. These include tangible psychology-based products for various life scenarios, mindfulness and meditation applications tailored to public demand, a Q&A community serving as a psychological support system for the general public, and book clubs designed to help individuals better absorb psychological knowledge.

As an online mental health service platform with years of experience, Yi Xinli (Simple Psychology) is continuously bringing new insights and possibilities to the mental health industry by leveraging its accumulated talent, industry resources, technological expertise, and internet operational experience, thereby driving the development of the “Internet + Mental Health” sector.

According to YiXinLi, the funds from this round of financing will be used to expand the team and develop more high-quality psychological products and services. Horizontally, YiXinLi will engage with a broader range of fields and strive to achieve cross-industry collaborations; vertically, it will conduct deeper development of its proprietary products to provide users with more comprehensive solutions and services.

Founder Huang Weiqiang believes that the psychological services industry is in a growth phase, with users’ understanding of psychology rapidly improving as related knowledge becomes more widely disseminated. However, on the other hand, the quantity and quality of psychological services have not yet met public demand. In this context, continuously expanding new psychological service offerings based on users’ diverse needs represents a sound development strategy.

To this end, YiXinLi has launched the “Pangu Initiative,” partnering with a wide range of channels and institutions to deliver high-quality psychological services to the general public, deeply explore public service needs, and tap into blue-ocean markets. In addition, YiXinLi plans to establish offline “Shared Counseling Rooms.” These spaces will not only provide counselors and clients with a high-quality environment for communication but also serve as venues for group counseling, offline psychology salons, and other diverse activities. This initiative aims to better serve users who prefer and are accustomed to traditional counseling methods, thereby enhancing the overall quality of offline psychological services.

Huang Weiqiang, Founder of YiXinLi

“U.S. Mobile Internet Mental Health Market Research Report” points out that in 2018, the size of the U.S. mental health market was $179 billion, accounting for 7.2% of healthcare expenditures, with per capita spending at $560. The size of China's mental health market was $14 billion, representing 2.4% of healthcare expenditures, with per capita spending at $11, which is only one-fiftieth of that in the United States.

Compared with the United States, China indeed lags significantly in mental health investment and the establishment of service systems; however, this also indicates that China’s psychological services industry holds immense growth potential. We are confident that YiXinLi, as a platform offering diversified service products, will achieve greater success in the near future, delivering professional yet compassionate services to the public.