How YiJiaoYuan Carved a Niche in Medical Education: Serving 500,000 Exam Candidates and Generating Nearly RMB 100 Million in Profit Over Three Years

From the primitive era of eating raw meat and drinking blood to the knowledge-based society characterized by the use and creation of tools, education has played a pivotal role in the evolution and advancement of human civilization. Historically, education, housing, and healthcare have been regarded as the three fundamental pillars safeguarding people’s livelihoods. Among these, the integration of healthcare and education constitutes the upstream segment of talent supply within the medical industry chain—the market for medical education.

The essence of education is the dissemination of knowledge, which is acquired through education. In every country, the entry requirements for transitioning from medical students to licensed physicians are regarded as nearly “rigorous.” Against this backdrop, educational services supporting medical examinations and research have become an essential need.

Anton Makarenko, a renowned educator from the former Soviet Union, once stated, “A one percent defect rate in educational work can cause severe losses to the nation.” With the aim of developing a thoughtful medical education product tailored for candidates preparing for postgraduate medical entrance examinations and professional licensing exams—such as the National Medical Licensing Examination—and thereby improving pass rates, Zheng Chunlong and Shi Hu, founders of Beijing Yijiaoyuan Technology Co., Ltd., have been exploring the field of medical education for six years.

Not every entrepreneur is necessarily a restless go-getter.

For Zheng Chunlong, his impoverished family background forced him to embark on a path of “self-financing” at an early age. In the era when landline phones were still essential, phone booths became the most frequently used infrastructure by students on campus. Zheng joined the ranks of long-distance calling card sellers; at that time, he was only a sophomore majoring in Biology at Jilin University. This marked his first entrepreneurial venture.

From 2007 to 2010, Zheng Chunlong began venturing into the education sector by establishing an educational consulting firm and a self-study examination school. His early entry into this field enabled him to accumulate substantial resources.

Unlike Zheng Chunlong, the other co-founder, Shi Hu, is a quintessential “academic star.” A clinical medicine major at Peking University Health Science Center, he topped the 2007 national postgraduate entrance examination in Western Medicine Comprehensive. Unlike his peers who buried themselves in their studies, Shi Hu was passionate about online gaming during his undergraduate and master’s years. In what was often dismissed as a “distraction from proper pursuits,” he won numerous championships, both large and small. It was precisely this fervor for online gaming that shaped the future trajectory of Yijiaoyuan.

As the mobile internet began to emerge, entrepreneurship became their primary focus. The initiator was Shi Hu, who launched his own medical postgraduate entrance exam tutoring program in 2011, initially recruiting students on a small scale. However, individual efforts alone proved insufficient to penetrate the market. Consequently, Shi Hu partnered with Zheng Chunlong, who had been continuously engaged in entrepreneurial ventures.

From strangers to long-time friends and then business partners, the two formally signed a shareholder agreement on October 9, 2012, embarking on their collaboration in an informal, “jianghu-style” manner and entering the market with an equal 50/50 investment split.

Two individuals born in the 1980s, of the same age but with different backgrounds, found their educational philosophies in healthcare unexpectedly aligned. Zheng Chunlong’s years of entrepreneurial experience in the education sector, combined with Shi Hu’s part-time work as a tutor at training institutions during his studies, gave them a thorough understanding of the process for the medical postgraduate entrance examination.

Currently, Zheng Chunlong oversees the overall operations and daily management of Yijiaoyuan (MedEdu Garden), while Shi Hu is responsible for medical professional content and the research and development of the APP’s products. After five years of entrepreneurial collaboration, the two have built a team of nearly 100 members and established Yijiaoyuan’s current product structure, which comprises an APP question bank, recorded and live online courses, publications, and offline intensive training camps.

Startups with an internet DNA typically transition from online to offline, but YiJiaoYuan has taken a different path.

Offering offline preparatory courses for the postgraduate entrance examination was the company’s initial strategic direction. On this path, which Zheng Chunlong described as “traditional,” Yijiaoyuan encountered numerous pitfalls. After investing substantial human resources and capital in customer acquisition, Zheng Chunlong found that the cost of recruiting students was high, leading to an increase in overall operational costs. “(Offline customer acquisition) requires posting posters, distributing flyers, and engaging agents; these highly traditional, even archaic, models are excessively labor-intensive.”

“At that time, the Medical Education Park had strong capabilities in translating educational resources into practical outcomes, but student traffic remained insufficient. After careful consideration, we recognized that a question bank was essential in the mobile internet era, so we began migrating our offline educational content to online platforms.”

A question bank app with strong traffic and highly active users was exactly the product Zheng Chunlong envisioned. In August 2015, Yijiaoyuan launched its first mobile question bank app, “Western Medicine Comprehensive Past Exam Questions” (now renamed “Medical Postgraduate Entrance Examination Question Bank,” hereinafter referred to as the “Question Bank App”).

During the first 90 days after the question bank app went live, Yijiaoyuan leveraged a viral “share for free access” mechanism, rapidly growing its registered user base to 150,000—a figure closely aligned with the annual number of new candidates taking the medical postgraduate entrance examination. Through this app, Zheng Chunlong and Shi Hu’s team amassed nearly 500,000 registered users, with the app being downloaded 2 million times.

Today, “Medical Postgraduate Entrance Exam Question Bank” has evolved from its original form as a pure question bank app into a comprehensive medical exam preparation app that integrates features such as question banks, experience sharing (community), and courses.

Online education can be described as another avenue for monetizing knowledge, with content being a critical factor. The postgraduate entrance examination question bank of Yi Jiao Yuan is primarily derived from its offline publications, specifically *Restoration of Key Points and Answer Analysis for the Clinical Medicine Comprehensive Ability (Western Medicine) Examination*, which is referred to by students as the “Little Red Book.” This was Yi Jiao Yuan’s first publication.

In Zheng Chunlong’s words, this is not only a textbook that “explains why option B is correct,” but also an analysis of actual exam questions that “tells you why options A, C, and D are incorrect.”

For medical students, nothing is more challenging than memorization. With nearly 4,000 pages of textbooks and knowledge points to master, candidates need more than just a “memory bread” quick fix. To address this memorization hurdle, the book’s key selling point is its “exam-point restoration” method featured on Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book). “Exam-point restoration is our proprietary approach, which propelled the book to instant popularity.”

From March 2016 to September 2016, Yijiaoyuan successively launched free question banks, including the “Western Medicine Licensed Physician Question Bank,” “Postgraduate Entrance Examination Politics Question Bank,” “Traditional Chinese Medicine Comprehensive Past Exam Papers Question Bank,” “Western Medicine Assistant Licensed Physician Question Bank,” and “Traditional Chinese Medicine Licensed Physician Question Bank,” thereby continuously expanding its coverage. Meanwhile, supporting publications for these question banks were also published.

Yijiaoyuan Publications and App (Data Source: Yijiaoyuan）

Labor costs account for a significant portion of the operating expenses at Yijiaoyuan. The institution’s faculty team comprises both renowned instructors specializing in medical postgraduate entrance examinations and professional teams dedicated to teaching research and student support. The former are engaged on a part-time basis under contracts ranging from 6 to 16 years, while the latter are primarily recruited as full-time employees, with an approximate ratio of 1:4 between the two groups. According to Zheng Chunlong, this segment accounts for approximately 48% of total expenditures, followed by course fees and rental costs, each representing 15–20%.

Operating a training camp in Beijing costs around RMB 4–5 million, whereas the cost in other regions is approximately RMB 2 million.

In an environment where the asset-light model is widely discussed in capital markets, many startups are adopting this approach—characterized by low investment, short payback periods, and a focus on robust cash flow—as one of their strategic paths.

However, Yijiaoyuan took the opposite approach, investing heavily in its offline intensive training camps.

In Zheng Chunlong’s view, the decision to avoid an asset-light model and instead operate offline training programs with a long-term operational approach is inherently linked to the difficulty of the medical postgraduate entrance examination. “The medical postgraduate entrance exam is the most challenging examination within the entire medical education testing industry. The shortest program cycle offered by Yijiaoyuan for enrollment is six months, with additional one-year training programs also available.”

The rigorous nature of the examinations necessitates a high level of educational support. Yixueyuan’s offline intensive training camps typically commence shortly after the Spring Festival and continue until the National Postgraduate Entrance Examination in late December. This full-cycle training model entails long-term investment commitments. “If we were to rent rooms in guesthouses or hotels, service quality would be compromised, failing to deliver the desired outcomes.”

It is reported that Yijiaoyuan’s intensive training camps for the medical postgraduate entrance examination are positioned as high-end offerings, with tuition fees ranging from tens of thousands to over one hundred thousand yuan per student. Tuition revenue currently constitutes the primary source of income and profits for Yijiaoyuan.

Driven by the traffic entry points and platform effects of the question bank app, the revenue of the medical postgraduate entrance examination intensive training camps has seen a significant increase since 2016. In 2016, the revenue from offline intensive training camps alone reached RMB 19.127 million (with an enrollment scale of 400 students), among which the profit was RMB 9.98 million, yielding a profit margin of 52%.

Zheng Chunlong’s strategy of transitioning from offline to online operations, and then driving online users to offline intensive training camps, has yielded significant results.

Over a decade of entrepreneurship, Zheng Chunlong joked with reporters that the biggest change starting his business has brought him is “getting fatter and fatter.” Due to an increasingly busy schedule, his exercise frequency has dropped significantly compared to before. Like most entrepreneurs, he spends his leisure time reading books on success stories and marketing by figures such as Jack Ma and Liu Chuanzhi.

“Without continuous learning, it is difficult to grow alongside the enterprise. For entrepreneurs to sustain value creation for their businesses, they must continually enhance their own capabilities.”

Yijiaoyuan is currently launching its first round of financing, with a target raise of RMB 15 million in exchange for a 5% equity stake.

As part of his plans, in addition to expanding the professional medical and internet teams, Yijiaoyuan aims to establish three to five intensive training camps across China, with locations in provincial capitals such as Shenyang and Nanchang. Furthermore, Zheng Chunlong intends to set up approximately 50–60 Yijiaoyuan experience centers within medical schools nationwide, offering students free trial courses.

“After thirty years of life, clarity deepens with age; after a decade of entrepreneurship, resolve strengthens with every step.” Zheng Chunlong and his team aspire to build not merely a standalone medical education platform, but a comprehensive online healthcare platform encompassing the entire healthcare continuum.