Aiyinghui Files IPO Prospectus: Pioneering Internet-Plus Maternal and Child Health Management with 400,000 Users and 160 Hospital Partnerships

iBabyCare Team

At midnight, just after closing the book Behavioral Economics, He Yihui, founder of Aiyinghui, received a WeChat message from the director of obstetrics and gynecology at a partner hospital, expressing hope to recommend Aiyinghui’s products and services to a maternal and child health hospital in a neighboring province. For her, this work pace has become routine.

In China, the prevalence of health education and the overall health literacy of the population remain generally low due to strained medical resources and insufficient emphasis on health education.

Aiyin Hui has leveraged internet technologies to collaborate with frontline clinical healthcare professionals in hospitals, using maternal and infant health education as an entry point to launch a new “Internet + Maternal and Infant Health” model.

“AIYinghui’s health education initiatives are built upon hospital infrastructure, with a curriculum design that reflects the most cutting-edge and prominent clinical research findings and development trends in maternal and child health, particularly in obstetrics and gynecology,” said He Yihui.

In October 2016, Aiyinghui secured a RMB 10 million angel investment round led by Oriental Fortune Capital. What kind of company is it? VCBeat (WeChat ID: vbeat) conducted an exclusive interview with He Yihui, Founder and CEO of Aiyinghui.

Hospitals have three primary responsibilities: medical services, health management, and health education. Among these, both medical services and health management have verifiable business models, with pricing regulated by the National Price Bureau, enabling hospitals to achieve sustained profitability. Consequently, hospitals devote significant effort, time, and resources to these areas. However, due to the aforementioned reasons, health education has become a weak point for many hospitals.

In the "13th Five-Year Plan for Promoting Equalization of Basic Public Services," the national government designated health education as one of 81 indicators, requiring local governments at all levels to take the lead in its implementation.

The importance of health education to a nation is undeniable. China’s medical standards are not significantly behind those of developed countries such as Japan; in many disciplines and specialties, China even surpasses them. However, in the area of maternal and child health, indicators such as maternal mortality rate and preterm birth incidence remain substantially higher than in Japan and other comparable nations. The primary reason for this disparity lies in the gap in overall health literacy among the general population.

“Maternal and infant health education underpins the health quality of future generations, reflecting modern, highly educated mothers’ strong demand for knowledge on pregnancy and childbirth. Particularly with the relaxation of the two-child policy, older pregnant women require more comprehensive health management. These factors are jointly revitalizing the maternity and infant care industry chain, making maternal and infant health knowledge an essential need, which also presents opportunities for Ai Ying Hui,” said He Yihui.

Since the “Internet + Healthcare” model gained popularity in 2014, a large number of platforms for maternal and infant health science popularization and education have emerged in the market. Some were founded by renowned obstetricians and pediatricians, others by influential online personalities with millions of followers seeking to monetize their content, while still others represent transformations by traditional pharmaceutical and academic representatives, among various other models.

Undeniably, for the special population of mothers and infants, health education plays a crucial guiding role throughout the entire life cycle of pregnancy and childbirth in promoting maternal health, facilitating smooth delivery, reducing the incidence of maternal and infant complications, and supporting scientific postpartum recovery and childcare.

However, the quality of maternal and child health science popularization platforms available on the market—including parenting guides, WeChat official accounts, mom groups, and parenting apps—is uneven. Maternal and child health knowledge is not mere entertainment; misinformation can cause substantial harm. Healthcare professionals with extensive clinical experience in hospitals should be the primary force in health education.

Aiyinghui features professional medical personnel who provide instruction and address inquiries. With minimal commercial incentives driving its operations, the content produced is more pure and free from utilitarian motives.

With a medical background and over 20 years of experience working in medical universities and healthcare institutions, He Yihui possesses profound insights into the healthcare sector, hospitals, and physicians. Consequently, the product focuses on leveraging hospital resources effectively and better stimulating active physician participation.

“Hospitals are in the best position to determine what constitutes the most authoritative, professional, and cutting-edge knowledge in maternal and child health education. This is akin to how only insiders within a hospital know which physicians possess the highest level of expertise. When designing curricula, hospitals carefully consider findings from multidisciplinary collaborative research to determine which specialties and physicians should be involved,” stated He Yihui.

“For instance, courses such as ‘How Hepatitis B-Positive Mothers Should Feed Their Infants’ and ‘Early Detection of Autism in Children,’ offered by our partner hospitals, represent the outcomes of collaborative disciplinary development within these institutions and contribute to advancing frontier knowledge in maternal and infant health education.”

As a one-stop “Internet + Maternal and Child Health” solution developed on the WeChat Official Account platform, Aiyinghui connects hospitals and users through an advanced and efficient cloud-based model, fostering online-offline synergy to build a scientific, multi-dimensional maternal and infant health management system.

Initially, Aiyinghui focused on entering the market through live-streamed courses, transitioning hospital-based offline courses to an online platform to establish a comprehensive training system. This approach addressed the limitations of limited reach and low efficiency in traditional hospital training programs, while also enabling users to access maternal and infant health knowledge regardless of geographic location, leveraging fragmented time slots.

Today, Aiyinhui operates two WeChat Official Accounts: “Aiyin Classroom” and “Ma Le Ge Mi,” which provide maternal and infant health education and related services, with the former focusing on functionality and the latter on emotional engagement. When establishing partnerships with hospitals, Aiyinhui also creates and manages WeChat Official Accounts for the obstetrics and gynecology departments of each partner hospital.

“Although our content is authoritative and professional, our teaching methods are diverse and engaging. Mothers born in the 1980s and 1990s are a generation immersed in pan-entertainment; they expect pregnancy and parenting knowledge to be presented in an interesting way,” said He Yihui.

It has been reported that “Aiying Classroom,” under the Aiyinghui brand, offers a variety of content formats, including live streaming, short videos, audio clips, community interactions, one-on-one medical consultations, daily trending news, and pregnancy and parenting tools. The platform provides comprehensive services to the maternal and infant community, covering stages from preconception through infancy.

“We are currently collaborating with Tencent Classroom and NetEase Academy. Tencent Classroom recognizes Aiyinghui for its richness and authority in maternal and infant health content. Moving forward, we will jointly explore ways to better meet users’ diverse needs, enhance the quality and diversity of our content, invigorate our curriculum system, and make course formats more accessible and engaging.”

“Internet + Healthcare” is constrained by policies and the existing system, meaning that transformation requires time to mature. Most “Internet + Maternal and Child Care” business models currently on the market start with content and then expand into e-commerce for maternal and infant products. However, with rising customer acquisition costs and investment repurchase clauses, some companies are being forced to extend their reach upstream and downstream, either by acquiring manufacturers or building their own brands. He Yihui candidly admitted that this approach is becoming increasingly difficult and is not well-suited to the current situation of the Aiyinghui team.

Through continuous experimentation, Aiyinghui has gradually identified a suitable monetization model. Specifically, it starts with maternal and infant education, providing hospitals with online education solutions, while offering personalized online and offline health management plans to precisely targeted users. To be specific:

First, content monetization. It is not about creating content for the sake of monetization; rather, once quality content is established, willingness to pay for knowledge will naturally follow.

Second, differentiate from medical institutions, such as by offering online health management services;

Third, the offline extension of healthcare services. We are currently actively collaborating with relevant functional departments in Shenzhen to conduct professional training for confinement nannies (Yuesao), building an offline brand for postpartum rehabilitation. In the future, we plan to establish a medical-grade confinement center and expand our postpartum rehabilitation services.

Currently, Aiyinghui has signed three-year exclusive contracts with 160 hospitals, reaching a user base of 400,000, with 70% being precise obstetrics and gynecology users.

Of course, having the heart to save the world is not enough; there must be a team of people who can get things done.

The Aiyinghui team currently comprises nearly 40 members. In addition to founder He Yihui, co-founder Xu Hongbo, a long-time friend of hers, was one of the six drafters of the global mobile Java standards and developed the initial demo for Aiyinghui’s product. Additionally, Co-CEO Lin Xueqin, a core member of WeChat’s founding team, is among China’s earliest mobile internet developers.

“After securing investment from Oriental Fortune Capital last year, we have now launched our Series A financing round. We have not yet achieved break-even, but it will definitely be attained by year-end; meanwhile, our business model has already been proven viable.”

From March 2016 to March 2017, Aiyinghui was consistently engaged in establishing three-year exclusive partnerships with hospitals, while simultaneously mobilizing human, material, and financial resources to collaborate with these institutions on curriculum and content design, thereby generating Professional Generated Content (PGC).

In April 2017, the company began deploying several commercial operation projects.

Currently, our partner hospitals are primarily concentrated in Henan, Guangdong, Hunan, and Hubei provinces. The first two provinces have large populations and high birth rates. Hunan and Hubei, due to their geographic proximity, constitute a natural service coverage area.

Regarding user scale, He Yihui expects the number to exceed 1 million by the end of the year and reach 10 million in 2019, covering the entire period from pregnancy to childbirth.

The goal of Aiyinghui is to acquire more high-quality PGC content through collaborations with benchmark hospitals, continuously enhancing the richness of health knowledge across all aspects of maternal and infant care.

Aiying Hui delivers value to hospitals and users, who in turn express their appreciation for the project and provide feedback, fostering a highly beneficial virtuous cycle.

“When we collaborate with hospitals, they may not fully appreciate the value delivered at the outset. As our partnership deepens and expectant and new mothers consistently praise the project while their needs are continually met, hospitals increasingly recognize the significance of leveraging internet-based approaches for maternal and child health education,” said He Yihui.

Reading has been He Yihui’s enduring passion over the years. As her company has progressed through various stages of development, she has recognized the need to continuously expand her knowledge base. Interdisciplinary fields such as psychology, sociology, economics, game theory, and neuroscience have filled her with great enthusiasm for the future.