SoYoung Announces Completion of $60M Series D-1 Financing to Build an Omni-Scenario Aesthetic Medicine Ecosystem

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned that on December 23, 2017, at the 3rd YOUNG AWARD Asia-Pacific Medical Aesthetics Awards Ceremony, Jin Xing, founder and CEO of So-Young, announced thatSoYoung has completed its D-1 round of financing, with the RMB 400 million in funding fully received.

Apax Partners led this round of financing, with CDH Investments as a co-investor. Existing investors Matrix Partners China and Trustbridge Partners continued to participate in the follow-on investment.With this, New Oxygen has become the first medical aesthetics platform to announce the completion of its Series D financing.

SoYoung was founded in 2013, dedicated to leveraging technology to help consumers achieve beauty safely.Currently, our business covers more than 220 cities across five countries—China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Singapore—serving 25 million users.

Jin Xing, founder and CEO of New Oxygen, stated, “The era in which internet services empower the physical healthcare economy has arrived. This investment from top-tier domestic and international funds is an endorsement of the New Oxygen model. We will leverage these funds to provide more meticulous and in-depth service support to medical institutions and physicians, delivering a comprehensive, all-scenario user service experience.”

This RoundThe lead investor, Apax Partners (hereinafter referred to as “Apax”), is Europe’s largest and longest-established private equity fund., having raised and managed approximately $51 billion in funds.

Apax has extensive experience in the healthcare services sector, with successful investments in GHG, the largest private hospital group in the UK; Capio, a pan-European hospital group; Apollo Hospitals, the largest private hospital group in India; and Syneron Candela, a global leader in medical aesthetic devices.

Regarding the investment in So-Young, Zhang Xike, Global Senior Partner and President of Greater China at Apax Partners, stated: “Apax Partners has been deeply rooted in China for many years with rigorous investment standards. We are honored to have completed our investment in So-Young, a leading internet enterprise in China’s medical aesthetics industry, at the year’s end. So-Young boasts vast market space and immense growth potential. We will fully support the management team led by Mr. Jin Xing in building So-Young into a top-tier enterprise in China’s internet sector, which is increasingly taking a global lead. With the completion of this transaction, Apax’s total investment in China this year has exceeded USD 400 million, fully demonstrating our optimism about the high-quality development prospects as China enters a new era.”

Co-investor CDH Investments, founded in 2002, currently manages assets exceeding RMB 120 billion. It ranked first among China’s Top 10 Private Equity Firms by Zero2IPO Group for two consecutive years in 2016 and 2017. In the TMT sector, it has invested in projects such as Qihoo 360, Tujia, and Fangduoduo.

Matrix Partners China, a follow-on investor, was an investor in SoYoung’s Series A round and continued to participate in its Series B and Series D rounds. Wang Huadong, a partner at Matrix Partners, stated, “As one of SoYoung’s earliest investors, we have witnessed SoYoung’s platform evolution over the past three years, transitioning from a community to a transactional platform, and further to an industrial chain service provider. During this period, we have also observed the growth of Jin Xing and his team. This innovative and pragmatic team has built a transaction platform based on a user-generated content community, establishing strong competitive barriers and significant potential for future expansion.”

In addition, Trustbridge Partners, which participated in the co-investment, was an investor in SoYoung’s Series B round and reinvested in its Series D round. Trustbridge Partners is an offshore investment fund management platform focused on the Chinese market, with portfolio companies including Dianping/Meituan, Haodf Online, Douban, and Qihoo 360, among other well-known enterprises.

Since the approval of Restylane 2, the first domestic hyaluronic acid product, in late 2008, China’s medical aesthetics market has been increasingly revitalized, driven by minimally invasive procedures. According to a Deloitte report, the market size reached RMB 176 billion in 2017 and is projected to grow at an annual rate of 40% through 2020.

On August 8 this year, the “New Oxygen 2017 White Paper on the Medical Aesthetics Industry” pointed out that one in every 2.5 cosmetic surgery consumers worldwide is Chinese, and that 53 out of every 100 cosmetic surgery recipients in China are born in the 1990s, sparking widespread social concern.

The medical aesthetics market, already valued at hundreds of billions, is showing signs of expanding to a trillion-yuan scale. While many are eyeing this lucrative opportunity, capturing it is no easy feat.

In the traditional medical aesthetics industry, institutions primarily acquire customers through offline channel agents and online comprehensive search engine platforms. Marketing costs account for more than 50% of total revenue, severely squeezing investment in service quality, which leads to low consumer satisfaction and low repurchase rates.

Consumer demand for medical aesthetics is unstoppable, yet the service market struggles to meet this surging demand, leading both consumers and practitioners to describe the industry as “fraught with hidden pitfalls.”

In 2013, New Oxygen entered this deep-water market as a disruptor, determined to bring clarity. Over four years, the “New Oxygen Model” emerged and gained prominence, shifting the industry from marketing-driven healthcare to healthcare- and service-driven marketing.To foster a transparent, open, and healthy market environment for the development of China’s medical aesthetics industry.

In 2015, the market size of China’s medical aesthetics industry was only RMB 90 billion, yet more than 30 medical aesthetics platforms had emerged by emulating existing models, leading to a peak in competition. Subsequently, traffic began to concentrate among top-tier players, and in 2016, the landscape of vertical medical aesthetics platforms consolidated from numerous competitors to just four major ones.

By early 2017, according to data from third-party firms QM and Analysys, SoYoung had solidified its leading position among medical aesthetics apps in terms of user engagement time and launch frequency, with the Matthew effect becoming increasingly pronounced. Discussing this competitive advantage, SoYoung CEO Jin Xing stated that it was not unique to the medical aesthetics industry; based on recent development trends, traffic across all sectors is converging toward top-tier platforms, indicating that the battle for market share in the existing stock market has concluded.

In the field of medical aesthetics, New Oxygen is currently the only platform that has entered Series D financing.CDH Investments stated: “In our observation and research of downstream medical aesthetics apps, we found that So-Young holds a distinct advantage over its competitors. Moreover, its founder demonstrates keen internet acumen and a profound understanding of business models, while the team exhibits strong strategic vision and execution capabilities.“We are highly optimistic that within the vast medical aesthetics sector, New Oxygen will be able to address more high-value industry pain points and penetrate deeper into various aspects of medical aesthetic health, thereby becoming an influential industry leader.”

In the medical aesthetics sector, New Oxygen was not the earliest entrant, but it has consistently maintained a strategic advantage. According to reports, in the United States, non-surgical procedures account for 80% of the total transaction volume in the entire medical aesthetics market. New Oxygen initially focused on non-surgical treatments and physician-founded clinics as its entry points, a strategy that now appears to have chosen the shortest path to success.

Jin Xing stated that New Oxygen’s foundational logic, combined with its robust operational capabilities, facilitates a dual-wheel drive between users and merchants. The two reinforce each other, achieving a spiral upward trajectory.

Unlike mature markets for basic necessities such as clothing, food, housing, and transportation, the medical aesthetics consumption market has undergone only a decade of commercialization. Consequently, extensive consumer education and guidance are required before users make purchasing decisions. In light of this reality, New Oxygen prioritizes addressing pain points in its user engagement strategy. Existing users with clear demand for medical aesthetic procedures prioritize safety above all else.

To ensure the highest levels of consumer safety and satisfaction, New Oxygen has implemented a multi-layered screening system. Only legitimate and high-quality hospitals and physicians are permitted to join the New Oxygen platform. Furthermore, dedicated personnel have been deployed across 220 cities to conduct on-site verification of hospitals’ and physicians’ credentials, local reputation, and operational status.

In August 2016, SoYoung partnered with Taikang Online to launch “Oxygen Protect,” the first insurance product covering aesthetic procedure outcomes. The policy covers 37 medical aesthetic procedures, and the entire claims process is conducted online and completed within 30 days.

While ensuring safety,New Oxygen Platform Has Accumulated 3.3 Million Cosmetic Surgery Diaries Written by Consumers Over Four Years, helping potential consumers address their needs for visible real-world results and standardized institutional service ratings in advance. By leveraging user-generated photo-and-text reviews, it assists in consumer decision-making.

To more precisely assist users in making medical aesthetic decisions, SoYoung has invested in aesthetic research, quantitatively and systematically defining the previously non-standardized concept of “beauty” for the first time. By integrating user data with multidisciplinary insights—including facial structure and aesthetic psychology—SoYoung provides comprehensive, scientific aesthetic and medical recommendations based on three temperament types and 24 localized aesthetic details. This approach addresses consumers’ deep-seated need for personalized, reassuring beauty enhancements.

The SoYoung team provides in-depth assistance to institutions in completing their digital business transformation, serving as an external online marketing arm for its partner institutions. In turn, these offline partner institutions become an extension of SoYoung’s own team. This interactive integration with partners is the key to SoYoung’s rapid growth.

Meanwhile, unlike the “customer referral” model of search engines and group-buying platforms, New Oxygen is committed to cultivating an ecosystem for the growth of institutional brands. By establishing a transparent and open competitive mechanism and introducing user-generated “Plastic Surgery Diaries” based on authentic reviews, New Oxygen enables high-quality hospital brands to flourish and gain visibility on its platform, thereby achieving the effect of “good money driving out bad.”

Currently, 6,600 licensed medical aesthetic institutions and 25,814 licensed physicians have joined SoYoung, covering over 95% of the legitimate medical aesthetic service providers in mainland China.

In the new round of industry division of labor,New Oxygen assumes multiple functions, including marketing, service portfolio design, online consultation, and post-operative management, enabling medical institutions to focus solely on delivering healthcare services., dedicated to refining medical technologies and scientific research, to provide better services for users.

New Oxygen believes that future users will be dispersed across various independent scenarios, whether online social, reading, and live-streaming environments, or offline service settings. New Oxygen will deliver tailored services closely aligned with these user scenarios, such as through WeChat Mini Programs in the WeChat ecosystem and utility tools like “Appointment” features within institutional service contexts.

While the “forms” may vary, the “essence” remains unified. New Oxygen aims to integrate high-quality medical aesthetic experiences into every user scenario, making it a readily accessible personal medical aesthetics expert.