LinkedCare Secures Tens of Millions in Series A+ Funding from Fosun Tonghao to Advance Dental Clinic Management Ecosystem
On the morning of September 26, 2016, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned that Shanghai Linker Information Technology Co., Ltd., a provider of “Dental Care + Internet” SaaS services, announced it had completed an A+ round financing of tens of millions of RMB in August 2016. The investor was Fosun Tonghao Capital, under the Fosun Group. The combined funding from the Series A and A+ rounds exceeded RMB 70 million.
LinkCare Information, which began operations in July 2015, secured angel investment from Matrix Partners China in August 2015. In January 2016, it completed its Series A financing round, led by DXY.cn, with continued follow-on investment from Matrix Partners China.
Founded in May 2015, LinkedCare is committed to improving the healthcare industry through information technology and empowering the healthcare ecosystem with digital technologies, connecting hospitals, clinics, physicians, patients, data, insurance providers, third-party services, and supply chains.
LinkCare Information has built a SaaS + healthcare + internet service platform, offering a comprehensive cloud-based digital solution for dental clinic management called “e-Kanya.” This solution includes a Practice Management System (PMS), Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, marketing system, and the “e-Kanya” Doctor App. In addition to supporting chain operation management and mobile office capabilities, it deeply integrates industry-specific digital solutions for aesthetic restoration, orthodontics, and dental implants, thereby optimizing traditional dental clinic service workflows and reshaping dental practice management systems.
Following the success of this funding round, LinkCare Information has officially launched the “e-Kanya” App, designed specifically for individual dentists. By building a social ecosystem for dental professionals, the app enhances the online-to-offline (O2O) closed-loop service model in oral healthcare. As a personal assistant tool for dentists, it enables both public hospital and private practice practitioners to manage multi-site practices, schedules, and patient records. The app also supports mobile office functions, medical record sharing, consultations on complex cases, and live video streaming. This significantly boosts dentists’ productivity, allowing them to dedicate more chairside time to their patients.
According to Liu Qikai, Founding Managing Partner of Fosun Tonghao Capital, the dental healthcare industry features a high degree of marketization and a high rate of multi-site practice. With domestic consumption upgrading, the dental sector is poised for a period of rapid growth. Currently, there are more than 60,000 dental clinics in China, representing a vast market. However, the level of informatization in clinic management is generally low. It is therefore suitable to leverage “Dental + Internet” to reconstruct service models within the dental industry. By adopting a SaaS model as an entry point to connect dentists, patients, data, and upstream and downstream stakeholders, the industry can significantly enhance efficiency and reduce costs.
The founding team of LinkedCare boasts over a decade of product and R&D experience at Fortune 500 companies such as Microsoft, Philips Healthcare, and Carestream. With a global perspective, robust technological R&D capabilities, and strong execution skills, the company’s “e-Kanya” platform is currently used by thousands of high-end dental clinics across China, establishing LinkedCare as a leader in the Internet+SaaS sector for dental care.
“As our first investment completed in 2016, DXY valued LinkCare Information’s R&D capabilities and its market coverage in the dental healthcare sector.” Zhang Jin, CEO of DXY, expressed delight at LinkCare Information’s rapid growth since launching its marketing efforts in March. “Within just six months, it has acquired thousands of mid-to-high-end dental clinic clients, with chain clinics showing particular favor for LinkCare’s ‘e-Kanya’ comprehensive digital dental management solution.” This aligns synergistically with DXY’s own DXY Cloud Manager clinic management platform.
As an angel investor in LinkedCare, Xu Chuansheng, Founding Managing Partner of Matrix Partners China, stated, “In the internet sector, SaaS plus transaction platforms represent a key investment focus for Matrix Partners China; however, the healthcare industry possesses unique characteristics and barriers. LinkedCare is a leader in the dental SaaS space, delivering high-quality services to numerous dental institutions and practitioners. Matrix Partners China remains bullish on outstanding teams in the healthcare SaaS sector and is committed to providing full support to help them achieve success.”
Following this round of financing, LinkCare Information will increase its investment in product and service innovation, continuously strengthening its product ecosystem around dental clinic management systems to achieve digitalization, mobilization, intelligence, social integration, and e-commerce enablement in dental healthcare. In the future, the company will use the dental industry as a starting point to explore new models of “healthcare + internet.”
Fosun Tonghao Capital is a high-tech venture capital fund under the Fosun Group. Focusing on early-stage and growth-stage investments, it covers the sectors of big health, internet finance, and TMT (Technology, Media, and Telecom), primarily participating in Seed, Angel, Pre-A, and Series A rounds. The investment amount for each project ranges from several million to tens of millions of RMB.
Fosun Tonghao Capital not only provides funding but, more importantly, integrates Fosun Group’s industrial resources with entrepreneurial teams to deliver comprehensive services that accelerate project growth. Its partners include leading global professional investment institutions, industrial capital firms, renowned business schools, and successful entrepreneurs.
Dingxiangyuan is China’s largest connector and professional service provider in the healthcare sector. Over the past 16 years, Dingxiangyuan has established the country’s largest medical academic forum, launched a suite of mobile products tailored for both professional physicians and the general public, and fully funded the establishment of offline clinics. Currently, Dingxiangyuan’s professional user base has surpassed 4.5 million, including 2.1 million licensed physicians; its consumer-facing brand, DXY Doctor, has reached tens of millions of users; and Dingxiang Clinics have been launched in Hangzhou and Fuzhou, with plans to extend standardized, high-quality medical services to more cities.
Matrix Partners China was founded in 2008 and currently manages four U.S. dollar funds and five RMB funds, with total assets under management of RMB 18 billion. Matrix Partners China focuses on early-stage investments and has invested in more than 350 companies to date. It concentrates on the internet and mobile internet sectors, specifically covering areas such as trading platforms, enterprise services, new culture, mobile healthcare, internet finance, O2O (online-to-offline), new technologies, e-commerce, consumption upgrades, and internet education. Its portfolio of notable companies includes Didi Chuxing, Ele.me, Momo, Pocket Shopping (Weidian), Cheetah Mobile, Kingnet Network, Liepin, 21Vianet, Bona Film Group, Baofeng Video, Tuan800, Tubatu, Zhaogang.com, Babytree, Yuanfudao, 36Kr, Fenqile, Jimu Box, E-Daixi, Nice, In, Flight Manager, Yuniao, Meiyou, and V Doctor.
Matrix Partners’ investment team comprises over 40 professionals with extensive internet industry experience and networks. By organizing into specialized sub-teams, they accumulate in-depth industry knowledge and systematically identify high-quality companies. Matrix also provides robust support to entrepreneurs through comprehensive post-investment management services, covering government relations (GR), public relations (PR), recruitment, legal affairs, healthcare, finance, and capital markets.