Wei Jianfeng and Jujian Tech: How a Doctor-Founder Secured Tencent's RMB 150 Million Investment in Just Three Days

[Guest] Wei Jianfeng, Ph.D. in Surgery from Zhejiang University. Currently a hepatobiliary surgeon at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, ZhuojianTechnologyFounder、President。

[Key Insights]:

1. The app requires continuous, in-depth optimization: 1.0, 2.0, 3.0...

2. Zhuojian’s Startup Pain Points: Severe Lack of Medical Education for the General Public and Significant Difficulty in Accessing Healthcare Resources，Loss of Medical Wisdom。

3. Tencent wanted to invest in me, and I was very wary at the time.

4. Maintain the identity of a physician throughout the company’s operations.

5. I advocate for "healthcare + internet," with healthcare as the core.

6. Seek the Right Investors for Fundraising.

7. Physician entrepreneurs have a deeper understanding of the pain points faced by hospitals, doctors, and patients.

 

The First Product: A Lightweight Model to Address the Challenge of Popularizing Health Knowledge

My original motivation for starting a business stemmed from an experience abroad. In 2006, while conducting postdoctoral research in the United States, I likely became overly engrossed in my work and neglected my health, which led to stress-induced gastric ulcers and massive gastrointestinal bleeding. At that time, I was in my third year of doctoral studies and had already studied medicine for eight years; nevertheless, I had limited knowledge about severe massive gastrointestinal bleeding and did not know how to manage it.

Later, I reflected from another perspective: the general public has even less understanding of medicine and is even less aware of the severity of certain medical conditions. This led me to my first entrepreneurial direction—helping ordinary people grasp basic medical knowledge.

After returning from the United States in 2007, I observed that the SMS business in China was still quite vibrant. In 2008, I launched SP-based mobile SMS and MMS services in Hangzhou via the mobile carrier platform, delivering targeted health education content to the general public. The project ran for two years and was considered quite successful, accumulating 120,000 subscribers.

In 2010, when smartphones emerged, I conceived the idea of developing an app to enable more people to access healthcare resources and obtain popularized medical knowledge via the internet.

In February 2011, we assembled a team dedicated to app development. In April 2011, we launched China’s first mobile health-based smartphone app—“Zhangwo Health” (Mastering Health). The platform featured information from thousands of hospitals, including expert profiles, health education materials, news and updates, a drug database, a disease database, a symptom database, and intelligent triage services. Chunyu Yisheng was established in May 2011 and released its first version in November, meaning we had beaten them to market by a full six months.

The Second Product: Heavy-Mode Locking Centered on Hospitals

After developing lightweight applications for over a year, we underwent a strategic pivot, shifting our focus from directly serving the general public to partnering with hospitals. From the hospital’s perspective, we now deliver services to patients, such as electronic medical record (EMR) development, patient follow-up, and remote clinical guidance.

Hospital Internetization faced several key challenges at the time: first, medical data required physical isolation; second, online consultations involved numerous legal issues. As physicians, we had to consider legal risks, so we independently deployed servers for hospitals to ensure data security and integrity. Meanwhile, our platform has never launched online consultation services.

The first step was to extract medical data, which was no easy feat. Had it not been for the full support of our hospital’s leadership at the time, China’s hospital-based internet products might have been delayed by two years. It was precisely due to our efforts that such internet-enabled healthcare solutions emerged in great numbers across hospitals.

On August 30, 2012, we launched our first application that truly extracted hospital data: “Handheld Zheyi.” At that time, most hospitals had not yet embraced the concept of enabling the public to access medical resources more efficiently via the internet, such as appointment registration and retrieving laboratory test reports.

After the launch of “Zhejiang University First Hospital Mobile,” we subsequently conducted further validations at Shanghai Changhai Hospital, Ningbo First Hospital, Jiaxing First Hospital, and Xiangyang Hospital in Hunan, among others. These efforts confirmed that hospitals are receptive to this innovative, internet-based operational model, prompting us to gradually roll out the product nationwide across China.

To date, the “Zheda Yi” mobile app has been implemented in more than 400 hospitals across China. A few days ago, Fudan University released its national Top 100 Hospitals list, among which 24 hospitals have signed agreements with us, and 13 have already gone live and are operational.

The product has been iterated to version 4.0, always with the hospital at its core.

We have been continuously and deeply optimizing the development of the "Palm Shang Zheyi" features, dividing them into several versions internally. Version 1.0, currently available on the market, enables patients to register appointments at the hospital via the app, retrieve laboratory test reports, make payments, receive medical consultation guidance, and access direct navigation to the hospital (including information on departments and layout).

The subsequent upgrade to version 2.0 incorporated patients’ personal health records and also covered patient follow-up.

Subsequently, the platform was upgraded to version 3.0, introducing services related to inpatient care. For instance, patients can view their surgical records during hospitalization via the app. Additionally, the update incorporated educational materials on examinations and surgery-related topics, as well as features for ordering daily necessities and meals during the hospital stay.

Early this year, we launched Version 4.0, which enables connectivity with partner hospitals. For instance, when a partner hospital needs to refer a patient, the confirmation procedures for transferring patient information can be handled via mobile solutions. Meanwhile, we have integrated telepathology, teleradiology, and remote ultrasound services—clinical functions closely tied to diagnosis and treatment—into our mobile app. This integration ensures seamless interoperability with hospitals’ internal Hospital Information Systems (HIS), thereby improving patients’ access to quality medical resources and streamlining physicians’ clinical workflows.

In addition to providing services for the digital transformation of hospitals, we have also undertaken projects related to health bureaus and government agencies. For instance, in collaboration with the Hangzhou Municipal Health Bureau, we established an integrated referral pathway connecting community health centers, county- and city-level hospitals, and provincial hospitals. This enables residents to directly schedule diagnostic examinations at provincial hospitals, book appointments with specialists at municipal hospitals, or arrange hospital admissions through their local community health centers.

The first round of financing was painful; I personally lent 200,000 yuan to the company to pay salaries.

While everyone now sees Zhuojian’s success in securing a RMB 150 million investment from Tencent as a glorious achievement, our entrepreneurial journey has actually been fraught with challenges, particularly involving significant hardships during the fundraising process.

How dire was the situation? Our first round of financing was completed in late May 2014. On May 6, I personally lent the company RMB 200,000 from my own funds to pay employee salaries, which illustrates just how difficult things were at that time.

Let me share our lessons learned from fundraising. During our first fundraising round, we received a term sheet from one company and were locked into an exclusive negotiation period for four months. Those four months were extremely painful. We were prohibited from engaging with or contacting other investors. Meanwhile, the investing firm continuously imposed new conditions and drove down the valuation. They repeatedly summoned us for negotiations, which was a harrowing experience. (Note: Wei Jianfeng is a physician, not a salesperson.—Editor’s note)

Later, I received an invitation from an investment firm in Shanghai. In fact, we had also secured term sheets from two other top-tier domestic institutions at the time, so I initially wanted to wait and see. However, the Shanghai firm was extremely resolute; the very next day, they came directly to our company to discuss the investment. After the discussions, they urged me to immediately gather all partners and shareholders to prepare for signing the agreement.

I expressed my strong aversion to the term sheet that had been locked in for four months during our previous round and refused to sign it. The investors immediately responded by stating they had come with a definitive investment agreement, waiving due diligence, and offering a valuation 2.5 times higher than that of the previous investor. Within an hour, we signed the investment agreement, without even having time to consult our lawyers.

The situation was critical; we might not have been able to pay next month’s salaries. Twenty days later, 40 million yuan arrived in our account, effectively resolving the urgent financial crisis.

This has also profoundly impacted our company. Often, when seeking investment, it is crucial to engage the right people.

When I was talking to them, I only spent five minutes showing the app before they asked me to stop. They stated that they were fully aware of our situation, having conducted in-depth due diligence on us for over a month. They directly asked how much funding we were seeking in this round, indicating they could process the payment quickly.

Tencent Investment took only three days.

After the first round of funding came in, around late October, Tencent invested $106 million in Guahao.com. At that time, we also received a term sheet from a well-known investment firm, but I felt uncomfortable with some of the terms, so I put it aside for about a month. Friends within the industry leaked our news to Tencent, and upon learning this, they immediately sent representatives to meet us at a café in Shanghai.

It seemed to be a Tuesday when we met at a café in Shanghai. At the time, I was quite wary of them because Tencent had already invested in Guahaowang (Registration Network), and we also had some registration-related businesses. Why would they still be interested in us? Although I clearly understood that we were merely providing services to hospitals, our self-positioning differed from external perceptions; outsiders considered us to be similar to Guahaowang.

Out of caution, I did not prepare a PowerPoint presentation and instead delivered an impromptu oral pitch for approximately ten minutes. I then turned the tables on Tencent’s investors, asking, “You have already invested in Dingxiang Yuan and Guahaowang; why would you also invest in me? Only after receiving a clear response to this question will I consider accepting your investment.”

I am deeply grateful to the investor I met at that time for candidly sharing Tencent’s investment strategy. He clearly recognized that our approach is distinct from others, as we provide customized services to hospitals based on a profound understanding of their internal needs. Furthermore, a key factor they valued in our team is my background as a physician, which enables me to fully grasp the unique characteristics and workflows of healthcare delivery, and to effectively leverage internet-based solutions to streamline the relationships among doctors, patients, and hospitals.

Furthermore, as a team with a medical background, we often have a clearer understanding of the directions of healthcare reform and can comprehend the legal boundaries within the medical industry, thereby clearly delineating what is permissible and what is not.

For instance, our team internally identified telemedicine as a major trend. Consequently, in late last year, we strategically focused on telemedicine and integrated a well-known telemedicine company with eight years of industry experience into our product suite. Earlier this year, the Chinese government officially issued strong policy encouragement for the development of telemedicine.

In fact, it is evident that while the profitability model of telemedicine has become clear, many traditional platforms often struggle with insufficient transaction volume. In contrast, the internet boasts abundant traffic but lacks a viable profitability model. Therefore, the two can be perfectly integrated.

Likewise, in mid-year of this year, the state vigorously encouraged the development of tiered diagnosis and treatment. On September 11 of this year, the State Council issued Document No. 70, which encourages leveraging modern internet technologies and the current state of the medical system to advance the tiered diagnosis and treatment framework. The goal is to direct patients toward community health centers and county- or city-level hospitals, with a target that by 2017, 90% of residents will be able to receive diagnosis and treatment for common diseases and certain major illnesses within their communities. In this regard, we have made early strategic arrangements by implementing a tiered diagnosis and treatment system in Hangzhou, which has gained recognition from authorities at all levels.

"At the time, Tencent’s investors told us that they were investing in us because Zhuojian is primarily hospital-centric, Dingxiangyuan is doctor-centric, and Guahaowang is patient-centric. I found this positioning highly acceptable and endorsed Tencent’s investment rationale."

After the discussion, I made two requests:

1. I require Renminbi (RMB). As a medical information provider or healthcare service provider, listing overseas may involve certain legal and data security risks. Furthermore, domestic regulatory oversight of enterprises with cross-border capital flows is currently quite stringent.

II. I hope to maintain my identity as a physician while operating the company. This will allow me to continuously monitor clinical practices and remain attuned to the evolving dynamics of hospital healthcare reforms, which is highly valuable for the company’s development.

Tencent accepted all these terms. The investor requested three days to report directly to Tencent’s headquarters, where he received explicit instructions from Ma Huateng to proceed with the investment. Three days later, Tencent made the decision to invest in Zhuojian.

This incident occurred last November. It was not until June this year that the head of Tencent’s Investment Department contacted me for the first time, explaining that this case was highly exceptional and, in theory, required multi-level approvals before a final decision could be made. Zhuojian Health represents a rare exception.

Q&A Highlights:

1. Some industry leaders have stated that the spring of internet healthcare will only arrive when hospitals begin to embrace the internet. This view seems to align with Zhuojian Company’s perspective. What is your take on this?

Wei Jianfeng:Since 2012, hospitals have begun to engage in internet-based initiatives. However, it cannot be said that the “spring” of medical internet has arrived, as there are many issues that need to be resolved in this field. Particularly for physicians, there are legal risks involved. One may refer to national policies to understand why remote medical consultations are restricted to interactions between medical institutions or among physicians.

Why is it that only physician-to-physician consultations are considered valid for providing diagnostic opinions and treatment? This is because ordinary patients often struggle to accurately articulate their clinical symptoms through various means. Therefore, in promoting the Hangzhou Community Health Platform, we enable community physicians to relay patient symptoms to senior specialists in a professional manner, thereby facilitating effective remote guidance. The true dawn of internet-based healthcare will only arrive when such policy safeguards are in place. Without clear policy frameworks, including legal definitions, current efforts in the medical field often remain superficial and fail to address the core issues.

Furthermore, current internet healthcare has not penetrated the core medical services, namely diagnosis and treatment. Only by integrating diagnosis and treatment can medical resources truly be made accessible to the general public. Simple steps such as appointment scheduling and payment merely represent a small step forward at the hospital entrance. Significant improvements are needed in internal hospital processes, including how patients navigate to consultation rooms, transition from outpatient care to inpatient wards, manage their stay within the wards, and gain a better understanding of their conditions. Many current startups have yet to deeply engage in the core diagnostic and therapeutic workflows.

2. Is Zhuojian currently profitable? How does it sustain its corporate development?

 Wei Jianfeng:Turning to the revenue model, some of our project construction fees this year can also cover certain labor costs, gradually bringing inputs and expenditures into balance. We aim to fully offset the entire team’s costs by the end of this year or early next year.

3. Are there many companies currently working on the digital transformation of hospitals? How does Zhuojian differ from them?

 Wei Jianfeng:There are numerous companies currently engaged in the internet-based informatization of hospitals. For instance, several firms in Shanghai and Jiangsu have developed similar app applications; however, many of them operate on their own platforms, hosting hospital data and resources there. In contrast, we remain committed to serving hospitals by independently developing app applications tailored specifically to their needs. Consequently, many large hospitals are willing to adopt our services and manage the operations themselves. From this positioning perspective, we are the leading provider in China.

4. What types of hospitals are currently partnering with us?

 Wei Jianfeng:More than 95% of the hospitals we currently collaborate with are public institutions. Although some private hospitals have expressed interest in our services, many engagements have been temporarily postponed due to staffing constraints. Recently, we have developed a configurable, modular application that reduces app development time to approximately one week, enabling us to now accept projects from private hospitals as well.

5. Does Zhuojian's application have the right to access data from the HIS systems of partner hospitals?

 Wei Jianfeng:First, the hospital must grant approval before this can be undertaken. The hospital would then coordinate with the HIS vendor to interface and extract the data according to our specifications for display within the app. Otherwise, we are not authorized to access such data, as it belongs to the hospital and the patients, rather than to the HIS vendor or our company.

Regarding data sharing with the Hospital Information System (HIS) of our partner hospitals, our current platform already includes modules for appointment registration, payment, and retrieval of laboratory reports. Furthermore, as we develop remote consultation and remote imaging services, we will need to access electronic medical records and test results. Therefore, deep integration with the hospital’s HIS is essential.

6. Regarding breakthroughs in precision medicine, does Dr. Wei believe they stem from genetic testing or big data?

 Wei Jianfeng:My understanding is that precision medicine extends beyond genetic testing. During my doctoral studies, my research focused on elucidating the translational pathway from RNA to DNA, then to proteins, and finally to functional proteins. Through this work, I realized that there is a substantial gap between genes and functional proteins; for instance, the uncertainty associated with gene mutations is difficult to assess. Consequently, relying solely on genetic data to estimate disease risk is inaccurate. Therefore, I believe that precision medicine should be grounded in big data analytics, rather than being based exclusively on genetic testing.

7. How does Dr. Wei view the medical consortium?

 Wei Jianfeng:From a domestic perspective, our implementation of medical consortia has been reasonably effective. In my view, a medical consortium must be anchored by a large hospital and integrate its surrounding collaborative hospitals and healthcare resources.

For example, we are currently building a medical consortium for a hospital, elevating its remote consultation capabilities to a new level. This enables scenarios such as:

A patient is transferred from a lower-tier hospital to a higher-tier hospital. Through the Medical Consortium, specialists at the large upper-tier hospital can review the patient’s required tests and diagnostic information in advance via a mobile app or website. This allows them to determine whether the transfer is necessary. Once confirmed, the inpatient admission request for the upper-tier hospital is entered into the Hospital Information System (HIS). When a bed becomes available at the upper-tier hospital, the patient from the lower-tier hospital receives an SMS or other notification, enabling direct transfer to the available bed at the upper-tier hospital.

Throughout this process, his treatment and diagnostic tests were not interrupted, which is highly beneficial for the patient. The medical consortium can streamline intermediate steps such as emergency care and consultations. For instance, if a patient at a lower-tier hospital requires surgery, remote pathological consultation can be arranged, and the patient’s clinical information can be transmitted directly to a higher-tier hospital through the medical consortium.

Last month, we onboarded five hospitals into the medical consortium, resulting in a total of 46 pathology consultation cases uploaded—a volume significantly higher than that of traditional consultations. Meanwhile, we have integrated additional modules into the consortium platform, including remote ultrasound, real-time guidance, patient referral, and physician mobility. Physician mobility is indeed essential; for instance, it facilitates senior hospital specialists providing on-site guidance at grassroots levels, as well as junior hospital physicians pursuing advanced training at tertiary institutions. Furthermore, we have incorporated remote teaching, knowledge sharing, and case discussions into the medical consortium ecosystem.

8. Dr. Wei, what are your views on the development of regional healthcare platforms?

 Wei Jianfeng:We have established four platforms within Zhejiang Province, located in Hangzhou, Ningbo, Shaoxing, and Jiaxing. Three additional platforms are planned, bringing the total to seven across the province. Taking the Hangzhou Municipal Health Commission’s regional platform as an example, we have implemented an integrated contract signing system for community physicians in Hangzhou to facilitate patient referrals.

Meanwhile, we also offer corresponding mobile apps. For patients, the app provides features such as appointment registration, retrieval of laboratory test reports, payment, chronic disease follow-up, and establishment of personal health records. For physicians, we have a dedicated doctor’s app, whose main functions include consultation, community patient management, referral, and credential verification.

9. Do you believe the current development of the healthcare industry is driven by “Internet + Healthcare” or “Healthcare + Internet”?

Wei Jianfeng: From my perspective, "Internet Plus Healthcare" is challenging to implement because healthcare is a highly specialized sector that does not easily integrate with the internet. Instead, I advocate for "Healthcare Plus Internet," where healthcare remains the core, and internet-based methods and tools are leveraged to deliver medical services more efficiently to the public and society at large.

 10. Dr. Wei, may I ask for your perspective on how hospitals and national policies view the digitization of patient medical records?

 Wei Jianfeng:Regarding the digitalization of patient data via the internet, we began our strategic layout two years ago. Many in the industry are likely familiar with the “Data Open Alliance,” of which I was a core founder. In the United States, the Blue Button Initiative has established government-level recognition that medical data belongs to patients, with hospitals serving merely as custodians. While certain administrative data remains the property of hospitals, we are actively advocating for the return of data ownership to patients.

We jointly established a research institute with Zhejiang University to address a specific challenge: how to return medical data to the public after it is generated across different hospitals. Given that hospitals vary in data structure, format, and even units of measurement, we need to consolidate, integrate, authenticate, and share this data before making it accessible to the public through various channels. This endeavor essentially requires a platform, potentially a non-profit one, to facilitate the process. Our efforts in promoting data openness have gradually gained recognition from the relevant authorities under the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Only by truly returning data to patients can the internet-based integration of patient data be effectively implemented; otherwise, achieving interoperability and genuine integration of patient data across different hospitals or institutions will remain difficult.

11. What are the advantages of physicians starting their own businesses?

Wei Jianfeng:It is not easy to be a physician, and it is even more challenging for physicians to embark on entrepreneurial ventures. Reflecting on this now, if I were not leading my team forward, working together as one crew in the same boat to strive toward a successful outcome, I would certainly wonder whether returning to hospital practice would be easier, offering a stable income regardless of circumstances.

However, from another perspective, I personally believe that it would be quite difficult for a typical IT startup to undertake these tasks. Such companies often lack a deep understanding of the pain points faced by hospital physicians and patients. While many people assume that appointment scheduling is a major challenge, it is actually only a minor issue, with a long series of other problems waiting to be addressed.

12. Having read previous reports about you, it seems you experienced a period of strained doctor-patient relations. How do you view the issue of doctor-patient relationships?

 Wei Jianfeng:In 2011, an unfortunate incident occurred among the patients under my care, which left everyone disheartened. I had always treated this patient well, sparing no effort to pull him back from a severe illness and securing for him an opportunity for surgery. However, an unexpected complication arose just as the surgery was about to take place.

Subsequently, more than 20 family members of the patient smashed everything breakable in the ward and even demanded that I kneel and keep vigil beside the deceased’s body for an entire night. However, I want to emphasize one crucial point: never engage in direct confrontation with patients’ families. At that moment, I made a prudent decision to bow deeply three times before the deceased’s body, adhering to the principle that the dead deserve utmost respect. Upon witnessing my actions, the patient’s wife publicly stated that Dr. Wei bore no responsibility for the incident and had done his utmost. This statement helped ease the tension among the other family members, allowing me to finally leave the patient’s room.

"Many medical disputes arise from the significant lack of understanding among patients' families regarding medicine and diseases, creating a vast gap that leaves the general public unclear about treatment processes or various complications."

Therefore, I believe our current efforts are highly meaningful. I have prepared nearly 200 educational pamphlets for distribution to the general public at our hospital. These pamphlets primarily focus on patient education, covering topics such as the surgical interventions required for the disease, potential postoperative complications, and possible patient outcomes. This ensures that, should any adverse events occur, family members will have a basic understanding of the situation.

For Zhuojian, we are committed to pursuing our ideals with a universal spirit, making the world a better place.