Top 10 Young Founders in China's Digital Health Start-up Scene File IPO Prospectus

There are individuals who, despite having the looks to coast on their appearance, choose instead to rely on their talent. Though young in age, they have already emerged as pioneers in the blue ocean of internet healthcare.

It is important to note that the healthcare sector differs significantly from TMT (Technology, Media, and Telecom) and O2O (Online-to-Offline) in terms of demographic profiles. Entrepreneurs in the healthcare industry are typically more than ten years older than their counterparts in the TMT sector. Another notable distinction is that professionals in the traditional healthcare circle often possess drinking capacities several times greater than those in the internet industry.

Nevertheless, a number of young innovators have emerged in the internet healthcare sector, injecting significant momentum and fresh perspectives into the industry. VCBeat has compiled a list of ten such rising stars in internet healthcare—born between the 1980s and 1990s. Let’s take a look at their entrepreneurial journeys.(Attached high-definition photos)！

Medlinker’s Wang Shirui: Founder of a Doctor Social Platform Chosen by Tencent

Medlinker, which focuses on building a social networking platform for physicians, completed its tens-of-millions-of-dollars Series B financing in September 2015. The round was led by Tencent, with Yunfeng Capital participating as a co-investor. Currently, Medlinker boasts nearly 100,000 real-name verified physicians and a team of approximately 200 employees. The company achieved these impressive results in less than one year.

Born in 1987, Wang Shirui is a veritable “youngster” in the internet healthcare circle. The idea of founding Medlinker first took root during his postdoctoral fellowship in oral medicine in the United States. While in the U.S., Wang was exposed to relatively mature physician social platforms such as ResearchGate, Doximity, and Figure 1, prompting him to consider whether these models could be adapted and implemented in China.

“Serious and professional” are the two key characteristics that Wang Shirui has summarized for foreign doctors’ social networking apps, which Medlinker has also adopted: strictly adhering to a real-name registration system to ensure user quality.

According to Wang Shirui, Medlinker’s core data metrics significantly outperform those of its peers. The platform’s physician user base is growing at an average rate of 10,000 per month, with a daily active user (DAU) rate of 10%. Furthermore, Yang Zhou, Medlinker’s Marketing Director, stated that only 5% of Medlinker’s physicians overlap with those on other similar social platforms, and approximately 20% hold the title of Associate Chief Physician or higher. After initially acquiring more than 30,000 physician users through offline channels, Medlinker gradually opened its online registration and verification portal for physicians. Currently, the ratio of physicians acquired through offline versus online channels stands at 1:1.

In August 2014, while Medlinker was still in the process of building its team, it secured RMB 3 million in angel investment from Ceyuan Ventures and PreAngel. Six months later, Medlinker raised millions of US dollars in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital. Another six months on, Medlinker closed its Series B financing round.

Following this round of financing, Medlinker aims to expand its physician user base to 400,000–500,000 within one year, covering nearly all outstanding physicians at China’s Grade 3A hospitals.

Only when there is a sufficient number of physicians on the Medical Alliance Platform can enough case data be accumulated to realize the plan for developing online clinical practice guidelines.

Leveraging the data resources accumulated on the Yilian platform, Wang Shirui is also planning more viable business models: for instance, integrating with certain wearable devices and establishing connections with insurance companies; conducting academic promotion of relevant products in collaboration with pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers. “The specific operational model is still under further planning, but we are committed to enabling physicians to earn income with greater dignity.”

In addition to providing social features such as academic exchange, Medlinker will assume a broader role in serving physicians. Wang Shirui predicts that with the liberalization of multi-site practice for physicians in the future, more doctors within the public healthcare system will leave their institutions, leading to the establishment of a new ecosystem. Medlinker will also support physicians in building their personal brands.

Gengmei’s Liu Di: An Aesthetic Medicine Entrepreneur Emerging from Chunyu

Liu Di, CEO of the plastic surgery app “Gengmei,” is a serial entrepreneur born in the 1980s. A graduate of Renmin University of China, he previously served as co-founder and Vice President of the digital health product “Chunyu Doctor.”

During business development efforts at Chunyu Yisheng, Liu Di keenly identified a widespread phenomenon among healthcare institutions: most medical departments resist internet-based transformation. The reason is straightforward—their revenue derives not from consumers but from the national health insurance system. In stark contrast, consumer-oriented specialties such as plastic surgery, dentistry, ophthalmology, and obstetrics and gynecology are far more receptive to the value delivered by digital transformation. Liu Di categorized these marketable medical services as “consumer healthcare.” As demand for consumer healthcare awakens, both patients’ aesthetic aspirations and physicians’ need for patient traffic have surged rapidly, turning this sector into a highly coveted trillion-yuan market.

Liu Di’s decision to enter the market through medical aesthetics was made after careful consideration: “From the perspective of the broader healthcare industry, plastic surgery has the highest degree of marketization among all medical subsectors and is the most amenable to transformation via internet-based models. In terms of target demographics, individuals seeking plastic surgery represent a group with core consumption needs; they are predominantly part of fashion-conscious communities, have a strong desire to share their experiences, and are thus more likely to form vibrant sharing communities. Only after accumulating a base of precise users through such communities can transactions be facilitated, enabling doctors to generate income and thereby creating a closed-loop ecosystem. Therefore, plastic surgery should be the segment within the entire value chain that offers the easiest breakthrough.” Consequently, Liu Di left Chunyu Doctor in 2013 to found the Gengmei APP, rapidly entering the mobile health market through the field of medical aesthetics.

Precise positioning and consistently robust operations have enabled Gengmei to rapidly become China’s largest platform for medical aesthetics and consumer healthcare services. In less than two years since its establishment, Gengmei has reached nearly 10 million users, with close to 10,000 physicians verified and onboarded. The platform maintains a leading level of community engagement among peer apps, while achieving an average monthly sales growth rate of over 50%, with June revenues approaching RMB 100 million. Recently, Gengmei held the first major promotional campaign in China’s internet-based medical aesthetics sector, described by industry insiders as “fiercely competitive.” Within just one week, Gengmei added nearly 400,000 new registered users and set a record of surpassing RMB 100 million in weekly transaction volume.

In 2015, Gengmei successfully completed its Series B financing round, led by VIVO Capital and followed by Sequoia Capital. Liu Di stated, “Gengmei has established a standardized process encompassing traffic acquisition, community management, appointment scheduling and consultation, transaction settlement, and post-operative care, thereby creating a medical service platform with a complete closed-loop transaction system.” Gengmei’s goals for 2016 also include expanding into broader consumer healthcare markets such as dentistry, ophthalmology, body contouring, postpartum recovery, and anti-aging treatments, signaling that Gengmei has embarked on a new phase of development across the entire healthcare industry.

Wu Bao Huang Wenjia: I Embrace Challenges

Throughout her academic journey, Wenjia Huang has focused on the dual disciplines of biomedicine and finance. She pursued undergraduate degrees in Finance and Medicine at the University of Toronto, which boasts Canada’s top programs in these fields. For her master’s studies, she attended the University of Pennsylvania, home to the first medical school and business school in the United States. Consequently, Huang early on set her sights on becoming a specialized investor in the biomedical sector. However, through her entrepreneurial experiences during university and her research on internet healthcare startups at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), she discovered that she was better suited to—and more passionate about—embracing greater risks and challenges as an entrepreneur.

During his work, Huang Wenjia discovered that vertical projects in the field of internet healthcare have significant room for growth, and addressing smartphone addiction represents a particularly novel entrepreneurial opportunity. Smartphone addiction is considered a “chronic condition,” characterized by long-term, high-frequency needs, with a high likelihood of relapse after treatment cessation. Moreover, since smartphone addiction is not caused by genetic defects, pharmacological intervention is not a necessary treatment modality. In the United States, addiction interventions deliver substantial value: every $1 invested in manual intervention saves $9.60 in subsequent treatment costs, while intelligent interventions can further significantly reduce these costs. Furthermore, smartphone addiction affects a broad population, with 10% of smartphone users already taking action to address it.

In November 2014, Huang Wenjia launched the Ubao project in the United States, officially embarking on his entrepreneurial journey to combat mobile phone addiction through a mobile application.

In April 2015, Wubao was selected as a recommended project through the review process of the Zhejiang Overseas High-Level Talent Innovation Park.

In May 2015, Huang Wenjia’s company was registered and established in China.

In August 2015, the company officially settled in the Zhejiang Overseas High-Level Talent Innovation Park and received government funding.

In November 2015, the beta version of Wubao (Mobile Phone Addiction) was launched.

In December 2015, Ube (medication adherence) entered the stages of patent application and prototype development.

Huang Wenjia stated, “The core philosophy of Wubao is to deliver patient-centered value. We engage in the mobile health sector by creating and supplementing services, filling the gaps in current hospital and medical service offerings. Rather than pursuing a zero-sum game or forcibly disrupting the ecosystem, we aim to complement it. This approach may be another positive influence derived from my overseas experience.”

Pai Yi Pai Wu Shizhan: A Tech Guy's Entrepreneurial Journey

Wu Shizhan is the CEO of Pai Yi Pai and a big data expert. He formerly served as Chief DBA and Director of the Technical Assurance Department at Ganji.com, and previously led Baidu’s Commercial Database Team, where he managed all revenue-related data systems, including paid search ranking, Fengchao (Baidu’s PPC advertising platform), and the Affiliate Network. With over ten years of experience in development and operations management for high-traffic, high-load internet platforms, he has mastered technical solutions for large-scale websites handling hundreds of millions of daily page views. He possesses extensive expertise in big data management and analysis, with in-depth research and practical experience in operating massive datasets within high-concurrency, high-availability environments. He frequently provides diagnostic services for complex technical challenges faced by startup companies.

With over a decade of experience in the internet industry, particularly bolstered by the strong technical backgrounds from BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent), our team exhibits a robust geek culture. We are the first company in China to achieve photographic recognition of medical documents, pioneering the introduction of deep machine learning (AI) technology into this field. Deeply influenced by the sharing spirit of the internet, Pai Yi Pai is currently advancing the output and contribution of its capabilities in medical document photographic recognition, big data, and advanced technology to partners within the healthcare community.

It is reported that Paiyi Pai was established in January 2015. In April of the same year, product development commenced, focusing on recognition engine development and data training, while the team was formed and its core members were finalized. In June, the consumer-facing (C-end) product for photographing, recognizing, and interpreting laboratory test reports was launched. In September, the cloud platform for image recognition and interpretation of medical documents was completed. In November, the company underwent a business transformation, shifting from developing and promoting a consumer-oriented application for interpreting lab results to primarily providing a cloud-based photographic recognition platform for medical documents to healthcare-related institutions, as well as pursuing “Internet+” collaborations with traditional pharmaceutical and medical institutions. Building upon the medical document recognition platform, the company developed flexible methods for capturing and presenting medical information, thereby driving the circulation of medical information within the healthcare ecosystem. In December, the company secured tens of millions of RMB in Series A financing; the specific amount and investors will be announced shortly.

Hulingjia’s Xu Lishan: Before Starting My Business, I Was an Investor

Xu Lishan holds a Master of Science in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. From 2011 to 2014, he worked in analysis and investment at a private equity firm with $1 billion in assets under management, focusing on information technology and healthcare management. One of the companies he invested in was acquired by a U.S.-listed company.

In early 2015, Xu Lishan returned to China and launched the nursing and rehabilitation projects he had been developing.

Hulingjia is a home-based rehabilitation and nursing product for the elderly under Yikang Meichen Health Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. Another product offered by the company, named Huli Jia, is a nursing and rehabilitation solution designed for younger users.

Xu Lishan stated that China’s rehabilitation and nursing systems are currently underdeveloped. In recent years, substantial resources have been invested in the hardware and software infrastructure within hospitals, while pre-hospital patient triage and referral, as well as post-discharge rehabilitation and nursing care, have been neglected. Some entrepreneurs have recognized this issue and attempted to enter the pre-hospital market through internet-based solutions. However, there is currently a lack of high-quality projects in the fields of rehabilitation and nursing.

Yi Kang Meichen, on the other hand, embarked on its entrepreneurial journey in the fields of rehabilitation and nursing care.

Taking Hulingjia as an example, Yikang Meichen has drawn on Canada’s advanced home-based rehabilitation and nursing system for the elderly.

In terms of nursing services, Hulingjia integrates nursing care with healthy aging and chronic disease rehabilitation for the elderly. Furthermore, it has established support systems for medical consultations, as well as prevention and emergency response plans for accidents, specifically tailored to the nursing and rehabilitation needs of older adults. Additionally, Hulingjia incorporates elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) nursing, such as health preservation methods for diabetes and chronic disease management, to help enhance the physiological functions of non-disabled seniors. Meanwhile, Hulingjia has introduced and appropriately adapted Canadian training curricula to train its own professional nursing staff.

Furthermore, Hulingjia seeks to leverage mobile internet and big data analytics to make professional elderly care services and dedicated personnel training more efficient, scientific, and humanistic.

“We categorize elderly individuals into three groups: Group A consists of healthy seniors, Group B includes those who are semi-dependent in daily activities, and Group C comprises those with disabilities and cognitive impairments. Each group has its own specific needs, and we provide personalized solutions tailored to each category,” introduced Xu Lishan. He added that for Groups B and C, professional assessment services are provided, along with the formulation of specialized nursing and rehabilitation plans.

The Hulingjia product consists of three components: the first is a mobile app for adult children, the second is a tablet placed at the elderly user’s bedside, and the third is an app designed for care service providers. These three components work in conjunction with one another.

First, adult children use the mobile app to schedule an online appointment, during which they complete a brief online assessment and provide their home address and contact information. This enables caregivers to obtain essential details before providing in-home services. Subsequently, the assessor notifies the elderly person’s adult children via the app and conducts an on-site visit. During the assessment, the assessor collects required data using a professional scale. This assessment tool integrates 13 well-established scales gathered from around the world, incorporates traditional Chinese diagnostic methods (inspection, auscultation/olfaction, inquiry, and palpation), and follows a standardized assessment process developed in collaboration with the research institute. Based on the collected data and interactions with the elderly individual, the assessor formulates a personalized care and rehabilitation plan. The finalized plan is then pushed to the adult children through the app. Upon their approval, they can proceed with payment to implement the plan.

Upon successful payment, the elderly user will receive a tablet computer. Subsequently, caregivers will provide continuous in-home services. Prior to each visit, caregivers will notify both the elderly user and their adult children of the scheduled service time via the app and communicate relevant details.

Upon arriving at the elderly client’s residence, the caregiver will check in using the client’s tablet to initiate the service. After the service is completed, the caregiver will also use the tablet to schedule the next phase of care and rehabilitation tasks for the elderly client, which will be carried out by the client’s children or home caregivers. Furthermore, the elderly client or their accompanying hired aide will provide an evaluation of the service. The children will be able to view their parents’ ratings of the caregiver, while the caregiver will also submit feedback on their own performance, detailing the level of task completion and overall service conditions.

Yi Bo Lai Huang Guanyu: Entrepreneurship, Starting from a WeChat Official Account

Huang Guanyu, a native of Hefei, Anhui Province, graduated from Anhui University of Chinese Medicine in 2004 with a major in Pharmacy. After graduation, he moved to Beijing alone. He subsequently spent ten years working in pharmaceutical sales and marketing at Wuxi Sino-Swed Pharmaceutical, Zhejiang Otsuka Pharmaceutical, and Abbott Laboratories.

On April 1, 2014, Huang Guanyu officially left Abbott to embark on his entrepreneurial journey, launching the “Yibolai Recruitment Network” project. This initiative stemmed from an inadvertent action Huang took in 2013. That year, he personally launched a WeChat official account named “Pharmaceutical Talent Mutual Promotion Platform” to address certain issues he had observed. At the time, pharmaceutical companies relied on limited recruitment channels, while job seekers faced similarly narrow options for finding employment. Huang aimed to bridge the gap between these two groups through self-media. Upon its launch, the public account gained widespread recognition and experienced rapid growth in followers. In 2013, with just two individuals managing the account in their spare time, the user base surpassed 100,000 by October. Various enterprises approached them for collaboration opportunities. Consequently, in October, Huang Guanyu and his partner registered “Yingbolai Information Consulting Co., Ltd.” and formally began exploring their business model.

In early 2014, he formally resigned to pursue entrepreneurship full-time, deciding to migrate from the WeChat platform to PC-based systems. This move was driven by two considerations: first, to align with the HR work habits of traditional enterprises; and second, to facilitate data accumulation and retention. Huang Guanyu stated that the most critical factor, however, was related to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. At that time, an article commenting on the incident published on their WeChat public account led to a two-week suspension by Tencent for alleged violations of user agreements. Those two weeks felt interminable, with no recourse for appeal, which ultimately solidified their resolve to build an independent platform. In April of the same year, they assembled a technical team; the beta version launched in May, migrating existing corporate clients and WeChat followers, thereby quickly securing their initial cohort of seed enterprise users. In August 2014, Yibolai Recruitment Network received seed-round investment from Wang Guanxiong, a prominent figure in the internet industry. On October 28, 2014, the recruitment website officially launched to the public. From fewer than 500 partner companies at launch, the number has now nearly surpassed 7,000, making it the platform with the largest number of corporate partners in the pharmaceutical and healthcare recruitment sector.

In August 2015, the company secured angel-round investment from Zhongjin Huicai. Going forward, it will leverage talent as its entry point and the internet as a tool to restructure human resources architecture within specific industry sectors, thereby pursuing more in-depth commercial trials and explorations.

Haoyunbang’s Huang Sen: An MPH Who Puts Learning into Practice

Huang Sen holds a seven-year Master’s degree in Public Health from Peking University and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics. He has long been dedicated to the fields of healthcare informatization and mobile health, serving as a core executive at startups focused on hospital management and medical information systems. His professional experience at companies such as Xi’an Janssen and GF Securities has provided him with a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the healthcare industry. In July 2014, after several months of research and reflection, Huang Sen officially launched the Haoyunbang project. The initiative aims to leverage mobile internet technologies to help patients with infertility better engage in their medical care, cooperate with physicians, adhere to medical advice, and achieve faster recovery. By integrating tools, online communities, doctor-patient interactions, and offline treatment services, Haoyunbang has established an O2O (Online-to-Offline) platform dedicated to addressing infertility issues.

Functionally, Haoyunbang offers users customized disease management guidance, enabling them to record and manage their treatment processes. Patients can use Haoyunbang to document symptoms, manage medical records, and receive timely reminders for key information regarding medications, examinations, and clinical visits throughout their treatment. Additionally, the platform brings together reproductive medicine specialists to provide online consultation and follow-up services. Furthermore, Haoyunbang provides a private and secure community where users can share experiences and discuss their conditions.

Unlike the typical perspective of clinical medical reasoning, Huang Sen prefers to approach issues from a population-level and systemic standpoint. “While clinicians generally aim to address individual patient problems, public health professionals are more focused on resolving issues affecting populations.”

Huang Sen believes that the commonality between internet healthcare and public health lies in the fact that both provide solutions to problems for populations. The internet can make public health work more efficient and convenient.

In the past, health education in the public health sector followed this model: gathering a certain number of attendees in a classroom and inviting a professor or physician to deliver lectures two or three times a week. In contrast, the internet-based health education model aggregates millions of users on online platforms, where physicians can share knowledge through videos, articles, and other formats. This approach transcends temporal and spatial constraints, reaches a broader audience, and enables more efficient dissemination.

Currently, the patient-facing platform of Haoyunbang primarily targets users in three stages of preconception care: those who have been trying to conceive for over three months without success, those requiring treatment for gynecological conditions of varying severity, and those undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF).

On the physician side, doctors can manage patients through grouping. Based on patient interactions, physicians can precisely deliver professional and targeted medical information or content to help patients understand their condition and treatment plan. This empowers patients with clear expectations regarding their diagnosis, treatment, and potential future procedures, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of doctor-patient communication.

On the patient side, Haoyunbang structures patients’ self-managed disease course data, which serves as the foundation for physicians to manage their patients. Meanwhile, patients’ disease course records are transmitted to physicians in real time, enabling them to stay abreast of patients’ conditions at all times and making interactions between both parties more targeted.

In the future, these structured data will, to a certain extent, become an important component of physicians’ scientific research. Furthermore, these structured data can be subjected to in-depth mining.

Currently, the number of users on the Haoyunbang Doctor Platform has exceeded 3,000. These physicians are predominantly specialists from Grade A tertiary hospitals, primarily concentrated in first- and second-tier cities.

Deng Guiwei, MedSci: I Am a Serial Entrepreneur

Deng Guiwei’s self-applied labels are as follows: serial entrepreneur, product manager, government and public relations, technology incubation and investment, biopharmaceuticals and nanotechnology industry, TMT entrepreneurial experience...

Prior to launching her own venture, Deng Guiwei spent four years in the human resources and service outsourcing industry, four years in the technology sector, incubators, and investment industry, two years in TMT startups, and two years in mobile health startups.

Currently, his entrepreneurial venture uses Wi-Fi as an entry point to create the “Ctrip” of the hospital sector. His startup, “Olive Branch,” has deployed Wi-Fi infrastructure in hospitals, allowing users to access free Wi-Fi by logging in via their mobile phone’s built-in browser, following the Olive Branch WeChat official account, or downloading the Olive Branch app. MedSci leverages this approach, using Wi-Fi as a carrier to position hospitals as the gateway scenario for internet-based healthcare, aiming to build the “Ctrip” of the digital health industry. In addition to providing users with one-stop medical services, it offers health-related services such as biotechnology products, insurance, and medical companionship. Meanwhile, it enables precise targeted advertising for B-side manufacturers.

Compared with mobile healthcare, mobile health represents a broader market. With rising health awareness among residents and improved health data monitoring, the demand for disease prevention and health maintenance is growing increasingly strong. Meanwhile, as medical technology advances, more acute conditions are transitioning into chronic diseases, further shifting the demand for healthcare services outside of hospitals.

In light of the hospital’s actual network requirements, Deng Guiwei believes that using Wi-Fi as the entry point into hospitals to provide a service-and-product platform that precisely delivers and vertically pushes new medical and health technologies to users will tap into a vast market.

For example, patients can opt for medical escort services at hospitals; family members accompanying oncology patients may browse new products for early cancer screening technologies or purchase anti-cancer insurance. Beyond core clinical care, there exists a larger health market within the healthcare setting, which often serves as the primary trigger for health-related needs.

Leveraging the positioning and high-speed communication capabilities of Wi-Fi, MedSci has effectively established a medical cloud within healthcare settings, enabling precise connectivity between doctors and patients across various departments.

Recently, the first version of Olive Branch, an app under MedSci, was launched. Although the interface is still somewhat rudimentary, a preliminary review reveals that users can purchase insurance, caregiving services, rehabilitation products, and other offerings through MedSci’s WiFi platform. Users can directly select their desired products from the product list and place orders.

It is reported that MedSci, founded in August 2014, has signed contracts with more than 100 Grade A tertiary hospitals across China and currently boasts over 100,000 daily active users.

Li Huobao Lan Xujun: A Boy Who Never Forgets Marketing

Born in 1989, Lan Xujun previously served as Interactive Marketing Manager and Planning Manager at brand strategy agencies such as Huayi Zhongwei. During this period, he orchestrated multiple successful integrated communication campaigns and won gold awards at prestigious digital marketing competitions, including the Effie Awards, Golden Mouse Awards, and ROI Festival. He also served as Director of Product Operations in the Technical Marketing Department at UMCG New Advertising Company, where he led teams of technical specialists, new media operators, and product operations professionals to provide enterprises with interactive campaign development, community management, and data-driven marketing services.

These experiences enabled Lan Xujun to excel in core responsibilities such as product planning, user operations, and market promotion for the “Lihuobao” pharmacy inventory management solution. As a result, Lihuobao rapidly gained extensive word-of-mouth traction on social media, acquiring a large volume of precise users—including pharmacy clerks, pharmacists, and OTC sales representatives—at a low cost.

It is understood that “Pharmacy Stocking Assistant” (Yaodian Lihuobao) is a subsidiary of Guangzhou Xiaoming Network Technology Co., Ltd. In December 2014, co-founder Lan Xujun led the team in initiating planning efforts, with official launch taking place in March 2015.

In April 2015, Yaodian Lihuobao secured an angel round of RMB 8 million in financing, led by Zhongyu Capital. Three months later, its WeChat-based service was officially launched. In August of the same year, after accumulating 10,000 seed users, Yaodian Lihuobao released its standalone mobile app. By October 2015, the platform’s user base had reached 100,000.

It is understood that “Pharmacy Stocking Assistant” has been aggressively promoted in 35 key cities selected from major provinces and municipalities, including Guangdong, Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, Jiangxi, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Tianjin. As of December 2015, the service had covered 36,000 pharmacies, with 178,000 followers, including 114,000 verified users, and page views (PV) exceeding 10 million. It is expected that around the Spring Festival of 2016, the platform will secure collaborations with pharmaceutical manufacturers for 100 product varieties.

Currently, among the pharmacies covered by Yaodian Lihuobao, medium-to-large chain pharmacies account for 60%, while small chains and independent stores make up nearly 40%. Notable chains include Chongqing Heping Pharmacy, Guangzhou Dashenlin Pharmacy, and Shandong Shuyu Pingmin Grand Pharmacy.

Winter TCM’s Li Zuyun: Entrepreneurial Insights from the Post-90s Generation

Li Zuyun was born in 1990. During his university years, he already had a track record of successful serial entrepreneurship. Although he did not initially believe in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), an experience during his entrepreneurial journey changed his perspective. He once suffered a lower back injury and sought treatment at various hospitals in Fuzhou for four months, but his condition failed to improve. Later, a friend recommended a TCM practitioner. After just one week of treatment with this practitioner, Li Zuyun made a full recovery. Since then, his passion for TCM took root in his heart. Upon graduating in 2012, he had accumulated nearly RMB 400,000 in startup capital, which he invested in the pharmaceutical sector. “At that time, Qzone was very popular. In 2012, I happened to come across a transfer notice for a traditional Chinese medicine distribution center in my friends’ updates on Qzone. I found it promising, and after two rounds of negotiations, I acquired the business for RMB 150,000, thereby entering the TCM industry.”

During the process of delivering traditional Chinese medicine, Li Zuyun further observed that “many patients come to fill prescriptions based on formulas they have found online. From the perspectives of safety and market demand, I believe that merely filling and delivering prescriptions is no longer sufficient; therefore, we have engaged physicians to provide on-site consultations.”

Gradually, Li Zuyun’s herbal medicine distribution center evolved into a moderately well-known traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinic. The growing number of patients seeking in-person consultations and online inquiries overwhelmed its sole full-time resident physician. This situation also made Li Zuyun recognize the viability of internet-based TCM consultations.

Thus, in 2014, Li Zuyun transferred his stake in the herbal medicine distribution center and embarked on an entrepreneurial venture focused on winter traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) projects.

In late January 2015, due to his complete lack of understanding of mobile internet technologies and the difficulty in assembling a team, Li Zuyun outsourced product development to another team, paying a deposit of RMB 60,000. The product was named “Dongri Traditional Chinese Medicine.” Later, at a dinner gathering with an entrepreneurial team in Xiamen, Li Zuyun accidentally met an investor. They hit it off immediately, securing a personal investment of RMB 1.5 million from Li Yang, an investor at Fortune Capital (VCBeat). Consequently, he abandoned the outsourcing plan and began preparing to build his own team.

In March 2015, Li Zuyun officially settled into the Baidu Developer Center at Xiamen Software Park Phase II, an office space provided free of charge to promising startups through a joint initiative by the Siming District Government of Xiamen and Baidu. “At that time, our investors had substantial resources in Xiamen, and coupled with the city’s favorable entrepreneurial atmosphere, we resolutely chose to launch our startup there.”

Currently, six months after its launch, the Dongri TCM Platform has enabled some physicians to achieve monthly incomes exceeding RMB 8,000.