SoYoung Partners with United Beauty and 'Dream Team' Physician Group to Set New Standards in Medical Aesthetics

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that on September 27, Union Lige Group held a press conference in Beijing, marking the official opening of Union Lige First Medical Aesthetic Hospital.

As a co-investor, the So-Young Medical Aesthetics app joins hands with top industry experts and platforms to promote the standardized, high-quality development of the medical aesthetics industry, working alongside the “Medical Aesthetics Dream Team” to implement the new healthcare reforms.

Professor Cao Yilin, a renowned international expert in tissue engineering and the pioneering scientist behind the world-famous “human-ear mouse,” together with Professor Guo Shuzhong, the lead surgeon of the second facial transplant globally and the first in China, have led their elite “Medical Aesthetics Dream Team” physician group to join United Liige as a whole.

Ms. Zhu Meiru, Deputy Secretary-General of the Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics; Professor Wang Jigeng, an expert in facial rejuvenation; Mr. Jin Xing, founder of the SoYoung app; and many other experts and scholars from the industry attended the conference.

Founded in 2013, So-Young has experienced rapid growth. Within just three years, the company completed its Series C financing and achieved overall profitability in 2016. Data shows that So-Young’s order volume in 2016 increased 34-fold compared to 2015, with total online transaction value exceeding RMB 2 billion, driving RMB 6 billion in output for the medical aesthetics industry. In December 2016, Li Bin, Chairman of United Regal, stated that So-Young was the largest traffic-referral platform for its online vertical business.

Currently, SoYoung’s platform has attracted 6,600 accredited institutions and 15,000 licensed physicians. A cumulative total of 20 million users have left search and consumption footprints on SoYoung, while 3.2 million consumer-authored cosmetic surgery diaries have comprehensively tagged these accredited institutions and physicians.

As a leading medical aesthetics group and incubation platform for entrepreneurial physicians in China, United Regal has established nearly 30 high-end medical aesthetic institutions in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Dalian, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou within four years of its founding. Meanwhile, it has set up branches in San Francisco (USA), Geneva (Switzerland), Vancouver (Canada), and Seoul (South Korea).

United Lige No. 1 Medical Aesthetic Hospital will be a high-end specialized hospital integrating plastic reconstruction and medical aesthetics, equipped with world-class medical devices, and offering a wide range of surgical procedures including organ reconstruction, revision surgery for failed plastic surgeries, facial rejuvenation, minimally invasive plastic surgery, dermatological aesthetics, and hair transplantation and restoration.

In recent years, major adjustments have been made to the national healthcare reform guidelines, with a continuous rollout of favorable policies such as encouraging private capital investment in the medical services sector and promoting multi-site practice for physicians.

As leading figures in the renowned plastic surgery department of a public hospital, Professors Cao Yilin and Guo Shuzhong chose to embark on an entrepreneurial venture by establishing a non-public plastic surgery hospital with integrated capabilities in medical care, teaching, and scientific research. The hospital aims to provide first-class technical services to patients and individuals seeking aesthetic enhancement, offer a premier training platform for young physicians, and create a top-tier clinical research base for the translation of scientific achievements.

As pioneers in “Exploring the Path of Future Doctors in China,” their achievements have been indispensable.

Professors Cao Yilin and Guo Shuzhong have assembled a group of idealistic scholars, comprising eight renowned plastic and aesthetic surgery experts: Professor Wang Zhijun, an expert in facial rejuvenation; Professor Yang Daping, an expert in composite rhytidectomy and facial rejuvenation; Professor Xing Xin, an expert in oculoplastic repair; Director Xia Wenhua, a nationally recognized expert in dermatologic laser aesthetics; Director Zhang Hua, an expert in cosmetic dermatology; and Director Zhang Jufang, an expert in hair transplantation techniques.

Although most members are over the age of fifty, they joined the physician group with a shared vision alongside like-minded renowned physicians, serving as industry role models; hence the name “Dream Team.”

The strategic collaboration among SoYoung, United LiGe, and the “Medical Aesthetics Dream Team”—three top-tier platforms—will jointly create the “Medical Aesthetics Dream Team” for China’s plastic surgery and aesthetic medicine industry. This means that the three parties will provide users with high-quality medical aesthetic experiences in areas such as cosmetic surgery and reconstructive repair, adhering to high standards.

In recent years, the development of China’s medical aesthetics industry has not been entirely smooth. A significant contributing factor is the absence of a hospital grading system akin to that of public hospitals within the medical aesthetics market, which is predominantly composed of private institutions. This lack of standardized evaluation has substantially increased decision-making costs for ordinary consumers. In an effort to expand their customer base, many medical aesthetics providers have turned to strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO) and paid bidding. Behind the average customer acquisition cost of several thousand yuan lies substantial promotional expenditure, leading to frequent occurrences of excessive profit margins.

The standardized development of the industry requires free competition and survival of the fittest. High-quality hospitals and physicians will emerge as winners in market competition, while consumers, through a gradual process of selection, will benefit from improved services and more favorable pricing.

By listing qualified, legally compliant institutions and physicians on the platform for consumers to choose from freely, the platform charges a commission on each completed transaction. Compared with customer acquisition costs that often run into thousands of yuan, this model significantly lowers acquisition expenses for medical aesthetics providers.

SoYoung’s approach is to integrate the upstream, midstream, and downstream segments of the industry. In this way, whenever consumers generate new demands, they can be directly connected with upstream manufacturers and medical institutions, enabling rapid feedback to the consumer-facing front end. This creates an open environment characterized by price transparency and healthy competition, thereby eliminating the issue of excessive profits prevalent in the industry.

The participation of Union Lige and the “Medical Aesthetics Dream Team” will bring SoYoung a high-quality team of physicians. In the medical aesthetics market, where outcomes and reputation are highly valued, the introduction of top-tier physician resources translates to impeccable service quality. Not driven by profit maximization or premium pricing, next-generation service platforms represented by SoYoung are breaking down the various constraints of the traditional medical aesthetics industry and establishing new service standards and benchmarks for the sector.

Regarding the background of this collaboration, the context is that we have acquired an equity stake in Union Lige First Central Hospital. This hospital represents a new initiative, established through the joint efforts of three platforms: Union Lige, the Dream Team Physician Group, and ourselves. It brings together top-tier public hospital physicians in China to enhance service quality in the fields of cosmetic plastic surgery and reconstructive surgery. Furthermore, in partnership with Peking University, the hospital also serves educational and scientific research functions.

As collaborations among leading platforms continue to drive industry advancement, the holistic development integrating discipline co-construction with the unification of medical practice, education, and research will proceed in an orderly manner, ushering in a new future for the medical aesthetics industry. A entirely new era of the medical aesthetics sector has emerged before us, where standardized, high-quality medical aesthetic services may have already become part of our daily lives.