LinkedCare eKanya Files IPO Prospectus: Empowering 10,000 Dental Clinics with Intelligent Marketing and Agile Supply Chain Solutions

Information systems serve as the neural hub of a clinic, with Internet-based, cross-device, and cross-platform SaaS software emerging as the new backbone for building “mobile clinics.”

Beyond empowering clinics clinically and managerially, Shanghai Linker Information Technology Co., Ltd. (core product: e-Kanya; hereinafter referred to as “e-Kanya”), a benchmark Chinese medical SaaS enterprise, is making significant strides in intelligent marketing and flexible supply chain solutions. By focusing on the pain points and needs of dental and medical aesthetics clinics, e-Kanya genuinely helps them expand revenue streams, mitigate risks, reduce costs, and enhance operational efficiency.

After three years of operation, e-Kanya has emerged as a leading SaaS platform in the dental and medical aesthetics sectors, partnering with 10,000 dental clinics. How does e-Kanya support chain management and facilitate the strategic shift from a product-centric to an industry-centric mindset? To explore this, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) interviewed Mr. Wu Zhijia, founder of e-Kanya.

Wu Zhijia, Founder of eKanya

As a pioneer in the healthcare SaaS sector, e-Kanya announced last December that it had completed a B-round financing of over RMB 100 million. Its management system supports chain and group operations, is fully compliant with U.S. JCI accreditation standards, and offers a Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) system deeply integrated with social media platforms, helping healthcare institutions achieve intelligent marketing.

Furthermore, eKanya demonstrates professionalism and competitive advantages in supply chain inventory management (SPD), mobile office applications (App/iPad), hospital and outpatient practice management systems (PMS), electronic health records (EHR), customer relationship management (CRM), billing and insurance processing, and third-party device and service integration.

eKanya also provides business intelligence (BI) tools to help dental and medical aesthetic institutions achieve data-driven growth in the era of big data, enabling clinic operators to understand the efficiency of every stage from customer acquisition to final word-of-mouth conversion, thereby facilitating targeted decision-making.

In terms of investment in product and service innovation, e-Kanya has continued to increase its efforts over the past year. Wu Zhijia revealed to reporters some milestone events since e-Kanya’s inception in 2017:

1. Launch of the Intelligent Inventory Management System. e-Kanya introduced an intelligent inventory management system, also known as the intelligent procurement-sales-inventory subsystem, to help dental clinics automate management and conduct data analysis across processes such as purchasing, warehousing, requisition, and outbound delivery, significantly improving efficiency;

2. Launch an intelligent social customer relationship management (SCRM) system. Leveraging WeChat, it provides precision marketing tools—including intelligent customer service, smart support, and automated marketing—to manage the entire patient journey across pre-consultation, during-consultation, and post-consultation phases. Additionally, it integrates with social media platforms such as Dianping to enable intelligent marketing strategies for clinics, including viral referral campaigns and targeted outreach.

3. Launch of the e-Kanya Mall. Since its inception, e-Kanya has been committed to providing comprehensive solutions for the dental industry from a whole-industry-chain perspective. Its self-operated e-Kanya Mall offers over 10,000 SKUs, covering more than 90% of clinic needs. While helping dental institutions gain supply chain cost advantages, it enhances the efficiency of procurement and inventory management. By providing a consumables supply chain for clinics, it helps them save money, effort, and worry.

4. Launched YueRong Medical Aesthetics Cloud, an intelligent SaaS management system for the medical aesthetics sector, as well as a general-practice SaaS platform. The medical aesthetics SaaS system is an industry leader, having signed contracts with hundreds of institutions, including Baihui Medical Group, Beauty Farm, PhiSkin, and Xinghe Medical Aesthetics. Meanwhile, the general-practice SaaS platform has secured a contract with a U.S.-based clinic.

“On one hand, e-Kanya’s dental SaaS products have become more mature, and the company has expanded into medical aesthetics and general practice product lines. On the other hand, we have accelerated our expansion in the consumables supply chain, with seamless integration and connectivity established between the e-Kanya SaaS platform and the e-Kanya Mall. Meanwhile, e-Kanya empowers clinic operations through its SCRM tools, which connect with social media platforms and e-commerce channels such as Dianping, Weibo, and Tmall. From a marketing and market perspective, these tools help clinics acquire new customers, boost engagement, and improve retention,” revealed Wu Zhijia, noting that e-Kanya has become a leading dental SaaS provider in China.

Reporters learned that e-Kanya currently covers more than 10,000 dental clinics, with 800–1,000 new additions each month. “We operate on a fee-based model, primarily serving mid-to-high-end dental clinics. From the perspectives of product development and industrial strategy, I believe e-Kanya is on the right track. Going forward, our goal remains to provide a world-class intelligent management system for dental practices, while also enhancing supply chain services for dental consumables across the industry,” said Wu Zhijia.

Enhancing the capability and efficiency of dentists and clinic operators in delivering high-quality patient care through a leading clinic management system is a core requirement for dental practices. Among these requirements, customer relationship management (CRM), particularly Social CRM (SCRM), has become increasingly important. Clinic software needs to integrate with major social marketing platforms: Facebook and Yelp internationally, and WeChat and Dianping domestically.

Compared with foreign markets, such as the United States, Henry Schein’s Dentrix Ascend and Patterson Dental’s Fuse are among the most widely used dental software solutions. In April 2018, Henry Schein announced the spin-off of its software business and the formation of a joint venture software company, Henry Schein One, with Internet Brands, a leader in helping dental practices attract and retain patients and manage online reviews. The new company aims to help the oral healthcare industry improve practice management, marketing, and patient communication through integrated dental software.

In the dental industry, patient experience is becoming increasingly important. Clinics are beginning to prioritize communication with patients and their overall visit experience, offering more personalized services. Among these efforts, the implementation of an SCRM (Social Customer Relationship Management) system plays a crucial role.

So, what problems can the e-Kanya SCRM system help clinics solve? Wu Zhijia revealed three key challenges:

1. Precision Marketing. Currently, many potential patients for clinics are concentrated on social platforms such as WeChat and Dianping. Clinics need a suite of tools to conduct targeted marketing campaigns, including WeChat-based targeted messaging, lucky draw programs, viral referral marketing, and outreach marketing, thereby creating a closed-loop integration of online and offline operations.

2. Intelligent Customer Service. Patient experience and post-visit follow-up are critical in the dental field, where reputation is highly valued. Since patients are generally less accustomed to answering phone calls or reading text messages, clinics can leverage e-Kanya’s SCRM system to conduct customer service and follow-ups via WeChat, thereby enhancing the overall patient experience.

3. Self-service Appointment and Consultation. Through SCRM, patients can independently schedule appointments and consultations via WeChat, including medical record inquiries.

“In fact, e-Kanya has been developing its SCRM platform for two years. The theories and business models underlying SCRM are not unique to China; however, e-Kanya is the first company to launch an SCRM tool specifically tailored for the healthcare industry. ‘When we began developing the software in 2015, we did not anticipate that SCRM would become a critical necessity,’ Wu Zhijia stated firmly. ‘We must look beyond internal clinic operations and management to encompass the entire upstream and downstream dental care ecosystem, including supply chains and consumer-facing services. By enhancing patient experience on the demand side and improving efficiency on the supply side, we can drive the overall upgrading of the dental industry.’”

The shift from “product thinking” to “industry thinking” is a key phrase that Wu Zhijia repeatedly emphasized during the interview. The first step in eKanya’s development logic was to perfect its SaaS software, helping dental clinics improve their management standards and operational efficiency, while continuously refining its products in response to technological trends and evolving patient consumption patterns.

“After providing these services, we established trust with the clinics. Then, through a SaaS-plus-transaction model, we bypassed certain intermediaries and improved the efficiency of clinics’ inventory management. Currently, e-Kanya’s primary revenue streams are SaaS annual subscriptions and the dental consumables supply chain; in the future, we may expand into supply chain finance.”

Reporters have learned that the pain points in the supply chain are mainly reflected in the following three aspects:

1. Traditional supply chain operations are relatively inefficient; without SaaS systems, data-driven operations cannot function effectively;

2. The presence of numerous intermediaries, potentially involving third- and fourth-tier distributors, increases costs for clinics;

3. Regarding product traceability, such as batches and quality of consumables, there are non-compliant practices and lack of standardization. The essence of the healthcare industry is quality and safety; clinics need new methods for expiration date management and early warning systems.

“eKanya’s intelligent inventory management is essentially a concept of flexible supply chain. We aim to enable clinic owners to know in real time their current inventory levels and projected future consumption. In this way, capital tied up in inventory can be utilized more efficiently and effectively.”

In Wu Zhijia’s view, the trends toward digitalization, social media marketing, data-driven operational growth, and software-supply chain integration in the dental industry are irreversible. Going forward, e-Kanya aims to deepen its presence in the dental and medical aesthetics sectors, address industry pain points and needs, and deliver exceptional products and services.

Wu Zhijia summarized the marketing strategies of the e-Kanya software as “using higher-dimensional tactics to outmaneuver lower-dimensional competitors.”

“Over the past three years, we have gained widespread recognition from mid-to-high-end chain institutions. Our product has surpassed mere clinical and management functionalities. Meanwhile, digital solutions for clear aligner therapy and dental implants, along with online training and case-sharing programs on the e-Kanya APP, are being progressively rolled out. The latest breakthrough for e-Kanya is the provision of intelligent marketing and supply chain services. To some extent, our product philosophy and maturity level are two years ahead of competing products. Our professionalism is well demonstrated by our compliance with the U.S. JCI accreditation standards.”

Additionally, e-Kanya is also an open platform. “Some large chain clinics have higher demands for financial and supply chain compliance. By leveraging its open platform to integrate with local medical insurance and financial systems, e-Kanya can support these clinics in meeting the regulatory requirements for going public.”

As the Chinese dental market matures, clinic operations are gradually shifting from extensive growth to refined management, with rising demands for informatization and data-driven decision-making, and an increasing emphasis on return on investment (ROI). “The clinics we partner with have diverse requirements: some prioritize marketing, others require seamless integration with financial and supply chain systems to ensure regulatory compliance, while others place a high priority on workflow control in orthodontic software and the management of orthodontic medical records. These varying needs require us to cater to customers across different segments.”

Reporters learned that the core team of e-Kanya boasts an international perspective and 15 years of experience in medical software R&D, with a focus on medical SaaS products and services, which serves as the cornerstone of its competitiveness in the market.

Nevertheless, Wu Zhijia also candidly admitted, “B2B products are judged by their weakest links. While we hold an absolute leadership position when targeting mid-to-high-end clinics, the demand for digitalization among some low- to mid-end small clinics is not yet strong enough. In this market segment, e-Kanya needs to adopt a more multi-dimensional approach to promotion, which will require additional patience and time.”

Regarding whether clinics should develop their own software systems, Wu Zhijia advised, “Globally, the Mayo Clinic spent $1 billion to purchase the Epic system between 2016 and 2017. Professional tasks should be handled by professionals. I strongly advise against Chinese medical institutions developing their own software, as it offers no advantages in terms of cost, efficiency, or professionalism.”

Only third-party professional software companies can continuously improve product functionality and user experience. “In the second half of the year, e-Kanya will continue to enhance its product competitiveness and market share. Additionally, through the e-Kanya Mall and SCRM solutions, we aim to support dental clinics. e-Kanya commits to never operating its own clinics; instead, we empower clinics through an industry chain mindset.”

Wu Zhijia revealed that e-Kanya has already received demand for management software from clinics in Taiwan, China; Hong Kong, China; Singapore; Malaysia; South Korea; and Canada. “We will launch a multi-language version at an appropriate time to enter overseas markets.” In May this year, YueRong Medical Aesthetics Cloud SaaS was officially launched, securing continuous orders, and is scheduled to enter the Taiwan market in October.

In the two consumer healthcare sectors of dentistry and medical aesthetics, e-Kanya has built an unreplicable moat in just three years, driving a new upgrade in the medical SaaS industry.