DaBai Mom Aims to Redefine Doctor-Patient Relationships Through Child-Centric Financial Products

“Hello, my name is Baymax. I am your personal healthcare companion. When you call for me, I will detect that you require medical attention…” This is the scene in which Baymax, the healthcare robot from the movie *Big Hero 6*, makes his debut. Director Don Hall remarked, “Everyone wants a Baymax. When they are sick or need help, they want Baymax to take care of them. Some women even wish Baymax were their boyfriend.”

Born out of this warm and thoughtful need, “Dabai Mama,” a team dedicated to children’s health services and maternity management, was established in March 2015 and secured tens of millions in angel-round investment from Sunshine Insurance Internet Fund and Wang Xi, co-founder of Dangdang.com.

Dabai Mama aims to reshape the doctor-patient relationship through financial products, fostering warm, high-quality, long-term trust between every family and their physicians. The platform currently hosts over 500 physicians, enabling hundreds of thousands of families to engage in zero-distance health consultations, find trusted doctors as friends, and gradually transition to stable family physician services.



Pediatric Financial Products Reshape the Doctor-Patient Relationship

CEO Dang Qi stated that the issues Dabai Mama is concerned about and committed to resolving primarily refer to the doctor-patient relationship in China, or more broadly, the relationship between doctors and families.

“Parents who take their children to the hospital for medical care often find themselves navigating numerous hurdles, enduring long queues upon arrival, and experiencing only brief interactions with healthcare providers after waiting. Throughout this process, parents are overwhelmingly anxious about their children’s health. These frustrations are precisely why we are reimagining the doctor-patient relationship.”

Dang Qi believes that although many companies have focused on the doctor-patient relationship, attempting to popularize parenting knowledge and reduce the frequency of hospital visits by parents through online registration, diagnosis, and treatment, as well as online education, these efforts merely address the restructuring of connections between doctors and families. However, the fundamental separation between doctors and families persists, and fragmented services fail to melt the icy barrier between them.

What “Dabai Mama” aims to do is to turn doctors into friends of the family, just like Baymax, the healthcare companion robot in the movie, so that an expert medical team can provide timely, accurate, and warm services to families in need. This is the original aspiration of “Dabai Mama.”

Dang Qi told VCBeat that finance serves as an effective tool and vehicle, capable of transforming not only payment models but also the core essence and extended scope of traditional services. Dabai Mama can leverage financial instruments to convert short-term doctor-patient interactions into long-term engagements, thereby enriching the service attributes and enhancing the user experience. For instance, this could potentially enable future offerings such as in-home physician visits and health check-ups.

One of the financial instruments mentioned by Dang Qi is commercial insurance, such as children's health insurance.

Dang Qi’s extensive experience in management and marketing at insurance companies has given him a clearer understanding of the current state of traditional insurers. “The limited touchpoints and low interaction frequency between insurance companies and customers represent a dilemma faced by all insurers.”

Dang Qi explained that the current transformation of insurance companies toward the internet is largely focused on using the internet as a sales channel. Traditional commercial insurance primarily serves to transfer risk and handle claims, offering limited functionality in risk prevention and intervention. How to win customers through service constitutes a significant challenge for traditional insurers, as well as an important opportunity for startups.

From the perspective of the fundamental nature of insurance profitability, insurers are willing to provide and pay for health services for their customers. This approach reduces disease incidence, promotes customer health, and extends life expectancy, resulting in a win-win outcome. Therefore, purchasing insurance is about solving problems; loss compensation is merely one function and should by no means be the sole purpose. Dang Qi noted that Sunshine Insurance’s slogan, “Make service the reason customers choose Sunshine,” is an excellent summary. He believes that in the future, those who can deliver superior proactive, experience-based services will retain customers and secure long-term success.

Dang Qi is highly optimistic about the future of family doctor services. “I hope to develop a product that provides parents with attentive family doctor services and rewards outstanding physicians who excel in disease prevention and intervention. By leveraging the ‘Dabai Mama’ platform to connect families, doctors, and insurance companies, we aim to reduce illness and promote wellness among children, thereby achieving a win-win-win outcome for families, doctors, and commercial insurance providers.”

Focusing on children’s health was a decision the team arrived at after careful deliberation, as children tend to become the center of family life. Dang Qi stated, “All parents hope for their babies to grow up healthy and happy—often prioritizing this even above their own well-being. Throughout a child’s development, parents inevitably have numerous questions that extend beyond illness to encompass all aspects of physical and mental growth. In such cases, personalized consultations from professionals and mutual support among mothers become critically important.”

“Currently, 90% of our users are mothers. We aim to gain their recognition and trust, thereby entering households. Our future revenue strategy focuses on family wealth management, offering a comprehensive suite of solutions that includes not only innovatively structured children’s health insurance, but also family financial planning and loan services.”

Trust: An Effective Tool for Bridging Finance and Healthcare

Dang Qi believes that all business begins with trust, which is particularly crucial in the financial and healthcare sectors. Unlike other mobile health platforms, Dabai Mama places special emphasis on fostering interaction and building trust between mothers and the platform. Through a diverse range of interactive activities, the platform gradually accumulates high-quality expert resources, enabling mothers to connect with trusted specialists and establish long-term relationships characterized by warmth and high quality.

To date, Dabai Mama has hosted over 60 online lectures featuring physicians and specialists, established more than 100 WeChat groups, and attracted tens of thousands of parents who follow these expert sessions. It is through these recurring activities that the team has built strong bonds and trust with its users. Dang Qi noted that the Dabai Mama office frequently receives homemade cookies, pastries, small gifts, and cards from mothers across the country, expressing gratitude to the platform for connecting them with doctors. “This is a very promising start,” said Dang Qi. “The sapling of trust is gradually growing stronger, which further inspires our team to strive for excellence.”

Dang Qi recalls that his operations partner once told him users referred to Dabai Mama as “the platform that cares most about its users.” He considered this high praise and felt deeply honored. In fact, the entire team identifies as members of the “Dabai Family,” adopting family-style titles such as Auntie Dabai, Second Aunt Dabai, and Thirteenth Uncle Dabai. Community managers likewise assume roles like Captain Fever, Captain Cough, Captain Picture Books, and Captain Music under the umbrella title of “Super Captain Dabai.” The community is thus managed and maintained by partners who relate to one another like family, all in an effort to foster trust, harmony, and closeness.

Dang Qi believes that in the internet era, experts must possess not only technical expertise but also a strong sense of mission and communication skills to stand out. Dr. Cui Yutao serves as an excellent example: he combines professional expertise with prestige and humility, and is dedicated to the philosophy of natural parenting. Most importantly, Dr. Cui is willing to devote time to communicating with parents online, consistently sharing childcare knowledge and addressing their concerns. It is this kind of doctor who earns the trust and support of parents. “We will also help parents identify and discover experts with these qualities, serving more families through the Dabai Mama platform,” he said.

In the future, Dabai Mama will not merely pursue growth in user follower counts; its primary focus will remain on user segmentation and the tiered classification of physicians. The platform currently hosts nearly 500 professionals, including practitioners of traditional Chinese and Western medicine, nutritionists, nurse supervisors, pharmacists, and psychological counselors. Going forward, it will expand its recruitment to include experts in areas such as children’s picture books, music, and parenting, aiming to select compassionate, competent, and approachable specialists who can become trusted parenting partners for mothers. Dabai Mama plans to accumulate 200 family doctor teams by 2016 to provide long-term services to 20,000 families. Additionally, it intends to launch Dabai Mama’s children’s financial insurance products in the first quarter of 2016, thereby realizing the business model for family doctors.

Gathering of Experts

Dabai Mama was fortunate to receive strong support from investor Wang Xi in its early stages. As the founder of Dangdang.com and a veteran of the internet industry, Wang Xi provided substantial strategic guidance to Dabai Mama, helping the team avoid directional missteps. Therefore, Dang Qi stated that he prefers to regard Wang Xi as the team’s entrepreneurial mentor and partner.

“Entrepreneurship is a journey of self-cultivation, where your flaws and weaknesses are amplified. Therefore, it is essential to continuously regulate your emotions, foster a strong sense of purpose, cultivate inclusiveness, and develop the ability to learn quickly. In my opinion, the three most critical capabilities for a CEO of an internet startup are: staying true to the original mission and strategic direction, selecting investors who share the same vision and values, and finding co-founders who can fight side by side and operate independently,” said Dang Qi.

Dang Qi has worked in operations and marketing at AIA Group and Sunshine Insurance Group, possessing an entrepreneurial DNA rooted in insurance and finance. Qi Xin, the team’s Head of Product, is a serial entrepreneur who previously served as Product Director at Huofaer and MaiLeGou. The team also includes Ethan, a warm-hearted member from Taiwan and co-founder of Jiepang, an LBS company with millions of users, who has become a beloved figure among the many mothers who follow “Dabai Mama”; Shi Chuan, a technical expert who formerly managed mobile system development at AIA Group; and Daisy Ma, who left Microsoft and Goldman Sachs to embark on her entrepreneurial journey. These core members, all endowed with entrepreneurial DNA, along with every reliable partner in the Dabai family, are relentlessly striving to realize the vision of Dabai Mama.

Group photo of the Dabai Mama team (top right: CEO Dang Qi)

Dang Qi recalled a statement made by investor Wang Xi: “The best legacy we can leave our children is not cars or houses, but rather healthy bodies and sound personalities.” “My child was born just as I was launching my startup. I still remember taking him to the hospital for his first check-up; the lack of transparency in medical services left me feeling helpless. I hope that ‘Dabai Mama’ can work alongside Chinese parents and family doctors to promote evidence-based parenting, enabling parents to experience the joy of accompanying their children as they grow.” This vision represents the “Chinese Dream” shared by Dang Qi and the Dabai Mama team.

PS: Dabai Mama is seeking co-founders with a medical background. Interested candidates may add Dang Qi on WeChat at “dangjoey” or email dangqi@dabaidoctor.com.

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