Former Wish China President Ding Haochuan Joins Youjia Health as Co-Founder, Files IPO Prospectus

Good news from Youjia Health, a value-based healthcare service provider in the health insurance sector.

Recently, Wang Yanping, founder of UPlus Health, revealed to VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) that Ding Haochuan, former President of Wish China, joined UPlus Health as a co-founder earlier this year. Together with the founder, he is fully responsible for the company’s development strategy and daily operations, with a primary focus on product, technology, marketing, and operations. Meanwhile, Wang Yanping is concentrating on advancing medical resource integration and partnerships with insurance clients.

Meanwhile, U+ Health has launched a product and service upgrade initiative. By establishing a medical service evaluation system for commercial insurance based on three dimensions—medical quality, medical cost, and medical experience—the company is building the U+ Select Medical Network. This network aims to provide “value-based healthcare” services to insurers and their customers, while precisely matching medical needs with treatment solutions for healthcare institutions and patients. Additionally, U+ Health has initiated a new round of financing, seeking investment from capital partners with strategic synergies.

Youjia Health Founder Wang Yanping (left), Co-founder Ding Haochuan (right)

VCBeat has previously reported on Youjia Health (see details:How Youjia Health, Which Secured Angel Investment from Legend Star Immediately After Its Founding, Is Tapping into the Trillion-Yuan Third-Party Service Market for Health Insurance?）

It is understood that after completing the validation of its business model in the first phase and establishing a closed-loop business operation, Youjia Health will focus on building a professional and efficient network of curated medical service providers in the next phase, thereby delivering platform-based value-added healthcare services to commercial insurance companies.

Value-based healthcare is a medical development model advocated by the World Health Organization and a trend guided and promoted at the national policy level. In simple terms, it delivers patient-centered medical services that focus on treatment experience and outcomes at the most reasonable and controllable costs, thereby establishing a service system that truly balances cost containment with clinical effectiveness. From the perspective of entry barriers and competitive moats, this preferred provider network, built upon an evaluation framework, will—together with its complementary online and offline service models—constitute the core competitiveness of Youjia Health.

With regard to the establishment of the aforementioned core competencies, the two founders have expressed full confidence. In addition to the resource and experiential advantages of the core team, this confidence is also partly grounded in the Youjia team’s high-efficiency execution and drive.

It is reported that since the company officially launched its business in the second half of 2017, Youjia has signed service agreements with a considerable number of insurance companies and core Grade A tertiary hospitals within just a few months, establishing product collaborations. Notably, one insurance partner’s product achieved cumulative sales of tens of thousands of policies within only three months of its launch.

While connecting both B-side stakeholders, the Youjia team has also leveraged its in-depth expertise in health insurance and internet operations to provide comprehensive product and advisory services to multiple insurers. It has delivered end-to-end solutions—ranging from needs assessment and product design to medical services—to several insurance companies, facilitating the rapid launch and implementation of their products and services. In this process, Youjia Health was honored with the “Outstanding Health Management Service Provider” award by a well-known life insurance company, underscoring market recognition of the team’s professional service capabilities.

By targeting the vast middle-class population and focusing on mid-tier commercial health insurance, UJia Health has identified a viable path through the establishment of a curated medical provider network. From the perspective of the health insurance market, significant opportunities exist in both the premium volume of health insurance products and the associated medical services.

Wang Yanping presented a series of data to substantiate the high growth potential of the health insurance market. She pointed out that in 2016, commercial medical insurance achieved premium income of RMB 404.2 billion, representing an increase of nearly 50% compared to 2015, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42% from 2011 to 2016.

While the revenue scale of the health insurance sector has grown significantly, the proportion of commercial insurance payments in total healthcare expenditure remains low. In 2016, the penetration rate of the commercial medical insurance market was only 9.15%, with an average per-capita spending of RMB 3,118 per policy, indicating substantial room for further growth in health insurance penetration.

If health insurance and medical services are more closely integrated, the penetration rate of commercial health insurance will be higher. Optimistically, by 2020, the penetration rate of commercial health insurance will reach 26%, with per capita spending per policy increasing to RMB 3,500.

In fact, this is also mentioned in the "Measures for the Administration of Health Insurance (Draft for Comments)" released at the end of last year: health insurance products should be integrated with health services to provide health risk assessment and intervention, as well as services such as disease prevention, health check-ups, health consultations, health maintenance, chronic disease management, and wellness care, thereby reducing health risks and minimizing disease-related losses. This implies that the integration between health insurance and medical services will become even closer.

In Wang Yanping’s view, high-quality medical services have become a critical component in the competition among commercial health insurers, with substantial market demand. There are also numerous areas where third-party companies can focus their efforts to optimize the policyholder’s journey across consultation, payment, and claims processing.

“At present, China has yet to see a mature model in the field of ‘health insurance + medical services + health management.’ ‘The market is abuzz with models such as HMOs, PPOs, and ACOs, and there is a desire to transplant successful overseas experiences to China. However, due to significant differences in market environments, foreign models cannot be directly replicated domestically; differentiated strategies are required in actual operations,’ said Wang Yanping.”

Ding Haochuan, co-founder of UJia Health, also agrees with this view. He stated that health insurance and third-party medical services for health insurance represent a highly promising sector, with substantial long-term growth potential. Moreover, the sector continues to gain momentum under favorable policy and economic conditions.

During his tenure as President of Wish China, Ding Haochuan was responsible for the overall management of the cross-border e-commerce platform’s Chinese operations, including building the product system platform, establishing supply chains, expanding merchant partnerships, and driving product innovation. Under his leadership, Wish significantly enhanced its reputation among Chinese merchants and increased its overall market share in China, earning praise and recognition from both the company and its investors.

Earlier, Ding Haochuan served as Vice President of Operations at eLong.com, where he was responsible for operations and product service platforms, as well as international hotel and insurance businesses. He has many years of experience in internet platform development, data-driven operations, and the design and management of supply chain platforms.

From Ding Haochuan’s perspective, the integrated management of medical services is also applicable to the concepts of supplier ecosystems and platform construction, enabling structured, algorithmic, and recommendation-driven data-based operations through corresponding models. Therefore, after joining UPlus Health, he immediately collaborated with the founding team to develop an evaluation model for commercial insurance medical services. This model assesses and designs services across dimensions such as medical quality, cost, and patient experience, while dynamically aligning with the needs of insurance companies and policyholders.

Wang Yanping and Ding Haochuan told VCBeat that Youjia Health will next strengthen its technological and platform capabilities, accelerate collaborations with insurance companies and healthcare institutions, and develop more services and products centered on health insurance to better meet the middle class’s demand for “value-based healthcare” services.

Meanwhile, UJia Health has launched its next round of financing, aiming to attract high-quality capital that is bullish on the health insurance sector and value-based healthcare services, and can generate synergies with UJia Health’s business.