Qing+: Behind a Weight-Loss Product Lies a Comprehensive Health Management Strategy

In 2013, a senior executive who had risen to the position of Vice President at a Fortune 500 Japanese company led a team of programmers to embark on a cross-industry entrepreneurial venture. After careful consideration, he targeted the weight loss and slimming sector. Subsequently, the predecessor of Qing+, Super Weight Loss King 1.0, was launched. In less than a year, it secured Pre-A round financing from Sina Micro Venture Capital. The company then underwent multiple rounds of financing. In March 2016, Qing+ raised tens of millions of yuan in its Pre-B round, becoming one of the leading players in the niche market of weight loss and slimming apps.

In a high-rise office building at Wangjing SOHO in Beijing, Liu Baojian, CEO of Qing+, gave an interview to a reporter from VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat), elaborating on the company’s cross-industry entrepreneurial strategy—starting with weight loss and slimming products and gradually expanding into the broader field of health management.

Qing+ is a weight-loss and slimming app positioned for urban white-collar workers, young women, and other individuals with strong demand for weight reduction. In Liu Baojian’s view, slimming down is a more pressing essential need than fitness. Fitness tends to be an activity sustained only by a minority with exceptional self-discipline and a strong desire for body shaping, resulting in a relatively narrow audience. By contrast, weight loss is a widespread need, with a potential market size significantly larger than that of the fitness sector. Therefore, Liu Baojian ultimately decided to enter the market through the “essential need” for weight loss, developing a product that enables users to achieve their body-slimming and fitness goals more easily.

Liu Baojian stated that Qing+ aims to lower the barrier for users to achieve their weight loss and slimming goals by building a healthy weight loss ecosystem. Specifically, Qing+ will focus on the weight loss market, aggregate users and professional resources, and create a closed-loop ecosystem integrating tools, communities, and vertical e-commerce for weight loss, thereby providing users with comprehensive weight loss and slimming services. “People are inherently inert, but this does not mean they lack the desire to lose weight and slim down. Qing+ intends to provide complete weight loss and slimming services, ensuring that everyone seeking to lose weight and slim down has a clear and easy path to achieving their goals.”

Currently, the Qing+ app comprises three main sections: QingTi (Light Body), Community, and QingMall. The QingTi section focuses on users' exercise and dietary habits by formulating suitable, sustainable workout plans with timely reminders to encourage regular physical activity. It also recommends balanced meal plans to help users manage their calorie and nutrient intake. Within the Community, users can freely share weight-loss experiences. Notably, Qing+ has invited experts and influential Weibo personalities to provide professional, high-quality content. To ensure the purity and scientific accuracy of community discussions, Qing+ employs a "manual plus technical" review mechanism that filters out misleading language, with a blocking keyword library now containing tens of thousands of entries. QingMall was developed to further meet the consumption and weight-loss needs of individuals seeking slimming solutions, consisting of YueShouYing (Joyful Slim Camp), QingYouXuan (Light Select), and Fat-Loss Meals. Among these, "YueShouYing" is the first online weight-loss camp to offer a contracted guarantee of results; "QingYouXuan" provides users with compact fitness equipment; and "Fat-Loss Meals" offers carefully curated meal packages prepared by nutritionists, tailored for busy urban professionals.

To establish its professional expertise in the field of weight loss and slimming, Qing+ has also established a Slimming Research and Development Center dedicated to research in this area. The center’s head coach is a postgraduate from Beijing Sport University and a former coach for the Chinese national teams in taekwondo and modern pentathlon, while its chief nutritionist holds the title of National Class-1 Nutritionist. The R&D Center collaborates with Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine to develop weight loss and slimming products. Additionally, the center is currently working with a national champion to compile a series of exercise routines.

Continuously exploring the latent needs of individuals seeking weight loss and slimming, and designing products in a targeted, comprehensive manner, has always been the focus of Qing+. There is a saying that entrepreneurs can be divided into two groups: the Southern School, which emphasizes service, and the Northern School, which prioritizes marketing. Liu Baojian, who started his business in Zhuhai, is a typical representative of the Southern School. Having managed to stand out amidst the fierce competition of entrepreneurship, Liu Baojian has developed his own set of insights. “Cross-industry expansion itself is not frightening; what is truly daunting is failing to recognize the risks inherent in such diversification,” said Liu Baojian.

With fifteen years of management experience in foreign enterprises, Liu Baojian repeatedly emphasizes the importance of corporate strategy. His guiding principles are to trust those he employs and not employ those he doubts, to delegate authority fully, and to prioritize strategic planning. As a result, Qing+ has been able to expand steadily during its team development phase and has enjoyed relatively smooth fundraising efforts. “Choosing investors is sometimes like going on a blind date; it’s not just about the money, but also about compatibility,” Liu Baojian values the promotional boost that investors’ external resources can bring to Qing+ more than mere financial support. Leveraging investors’ channels for resource exchange to further expand market reach and influence is central to Liu Baojian’s strategic thinking for corporate development.

Liu Baojian outlined the company’s future development roadmap to VCBeat: In the first phase, the focus will be on weight loss for women, aiming to build China’s largest healthy weight-loss platform. The second phase will involve a gradual transition toward comprehensive weight management. The third phase will expand services to encompass overall user health management. Currently, Qing+ has surpassed 20 million registered users. According to the Analysys International White Paper, Qing+ ranked first in quarterly active users among weight-loss and fitness apps in China during the first quarter of 2016, thereby initially achieving the Phase I objectives envisioned by Liu Baojian. Moving forward, Qing+ will begin exploring commercial monetization strategies and gradually expand into offline channels, offering users more diverse and comprehensive options for weight loss and slimming.