WeDoctor Completes $500 Million Pre-IPO Financing Round, Valuation Reaches $5.5 Billion

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned on the morning of May 9, 2018, that WeDoctor, a unicorn enterprise in internet healthcare, announced the completion of its $500 million Pre-IPO financing round. This round was strategically led by AIA Group Limited and NWS Holdings Limited, with participation from both new and existing investors, including China Investment Capital Fund Management Co., Ltd.

According to feedback from the VCBeat database, this round of financing is the largest pre-IPO financing completed to date in China's healthcare technology industry. Following the completion of the financing, WeDoctor’s valuation stands at $5.5 billion.

At this point, WeDoctor has become the largest unicorn enterprise in the industry and is making its final sprint toward an initial public offering.

The announcement of this financing round marks another major development in the internet healthcare sector, following Ping An Good Doctor’s successful IPO on May 4!

Previously, WeDoctor underwent three rounds of financing:

Series A, January 2012: Morningside Venture Capital and Fenghe Investment jointly invested $22 million;

Series B, October 2014: Tencent led the round, with Fosun Capital, Morningside Venture Capital, and Qiming Venture Partners co-investing a total of $106.4 million;

Series C, September 2015: China Development Bank Capital, Tencent, Fosun Pharma, and others jointly invested $394 million.

Since its establishment in 2010, WeDoctor has undergone eight years of development, starting from Guahao.com and successively expanding into business lines such as internet hospitals, general practice clinics, pharmacy-clinics, health e-commerce platforms, WeDoctor Cloud, and commercial insurance, thereby forming a self-contained, closed-loop ecosystem.

By uniting governments, hospitals, physicians, pharmaceutical companies, and financial institutions, WeDoctor is building a next-generation healthcare service system for the future. Currently, its core business spans four major sectors: WeMed, WePharma, WeInsure, and WeDoctor Cloud.

The platform has now connected more than 2,700 hospitals and 220,000 doctors across 30 provinces in China, providing over 870 million services to 110 million real-name registered users. It has also established the Wuzhen Internet Hospital, a leader in China, and achieved rapid development in the research, application, and deployment of intelligent medical and health terminals.

Following this round of financing, WeDoctor will fully accelerate the development of its novel HMO model and its intelligent medical cloud platform, “WeDoctor Cloud.”

WeDoctor’s New HMO Integrates Eight Years of Resources and Advantages in Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, and Insurance to Create an “Online + Offline, Primary Care + Specialty Care” Health Service System, Providing Users with Holistic, End-to-End, and Family-Oriented Managed Healthcare Services.

On April 21, WeDoctor General Practice’s Beijing Xidan Center and Nanjing Yuhua Center opened simultaneously. One year after the first flagship center was established in Hangzhou in 2017, WeDoctor General Practice has expanded into two additional cities. It is expected that throughout 2018, WeDoctor General Practice will sequentially open centers in Jinan, Chengdu, Wuhan, Ningbo, and other locations.

According to Liao Jieyuan, Chairman and CEO of WeDoctor, the company will accelerate the export of standardized construction and operational capabilities for general practice centers over the next three years. Through open models such as self-built, franchised, and entrusted operations, WeDoctor aims to establish 100 general practice institutions. By leveraging technologies including Internet-plus, remote devices, and artificial intelligence, the company will provide innovative healthcare services to individuals, families, and communities, positioning itself as a leader in China’s “Internet + Family Medicine” sector.

Micro Medical Group General Practice Center

WeDoctor Cloud is the world’s first cloud platform dedicated to intelligent healthcare, leveraging internet, big data, and artificial intelligence technologies to provide smart healthcare cloud and medical AI solutions for governments, healthcare institutions, and medical health enterprises, thereby enhancing the efficiency of traditional healthcare service systems.

Based on WeDoctor Cloud, WeDoctor has currently developed two medical artificial intelligence products: Ruiyi AI Doctor and Huatuo AI Doctor. The former is designed for Western medicine AI, while the latter is tailored for traditional Chinese medicine AI.

According to VCBeat, leveraging WeDoctor’s data accumulation and scenario connectivity, WeDoctor Cloud can provide dozens of cloud-based solutions—including internet hospitals, internet medical consortia, family doctor contracting, cloud pharmacies, and AI-assisted medical diagnosis—to a diverse range of users such as governments, hospitals, primary healthcare institutions, and medical health enterprises.

Not only that, Weiyi Cloud is also an open intelligent medical cloud platform. It can assist the government in carrying out family doctor contract services, help hospitals and doctors improve their medical diagnosis and treatment capabilities, collaborate with pharmaceutical companies, insurance enterprises, and other institutions to build a healthcare industry chain, improve China's primary healthcare service system, and provide families with continuous, proactive, and comprehensive family health care services.

This funding round has attracted several well-known leading institutions in the industry, with both new and existing shareholders providing strong momentum for WeDoctor’s future business growth and sustainable development. WeDoctor plans to engage in strategic collaborations with strategic investors to enhance its platform service capabilities.

Following this investment and the signing of the strategic cooperation agreement, AIA will become a key life and health insurance partner of WeDoctor.Both parties are committed to providing innovative and high-quality products and services to improve the health of people in China and across the Asia-Pacific region.

Liao Jieyuan, Chairman and CEO of WeDoctor, stated, “The participation of both new and existing investors reflects their trust in the WeDoctor team and underscores their commitment to enhancing healthcare services through technology. The ‘online + offline, general practice + specialty care’ new healthcare service model, jointly built by WeDoctor and its partners, is becoming increasingly mature, and we have made significant progress in areas such as medical cloud and artificial intelligence. The entry of new investors, including AIA Group and NWS Holdings, will accelerate our development and create multi-win synergies.”

AIA’s Regional Chief Executive Officer, Cai Qiang, stated: “We are committed to engaging with our customers at every significant stage of their lives, and this partnership is an integral part of achieving that ongoing objective. Leveraging AIA’s market leadership in life and health insurance, combined with WeDoctor’s leading technology platform and high-quality medical service network, this collaboration will play a positive and pivotal role in supporting the physical and mental well-being of AIA’s customers. We look forward to working hand in hand with WeDoctor to provide the people of China with high-quality and affordable healthcare services.”

Cheng Chi-ming, Executive Director of NWS Holdings, stated: “NWS Holdings continues to make significant investments in the healthcare services and healthcare management sectors. This investment in WeDoctor reflects our confidence in the industry’s prospects. We will continue to strengthen our professional expertise while allocating resources across multiple healthcare platforms, thereby improving the lives and well-being of people worldwide, particularly those in China.”

Micro Medical Group finally told VCBeat that in the future, it will strengthen the use of internet, big data, and artificial intelligence technologies to drive the industrial upgrade of “medical care, pharmaceuticals, and insurance,” leveraging technological means to enhance the efficiency of the existing healthcare service system and promote the widespread adoption of managed healthcare services.