Wen | Xin Ying
Editor | Wang Xiao
At the end of 22, Ali Health (241.HK), which has been listed for six years, made a profit for the first time, and the market value of JD Health (6618.HK) surpassed Ali Health on the day it was listed. Internet medical care, which was heated by the epidemic, constantly triggered an upsurge in the investment community.
Avoiding the high competition with Internet medical giants and cutting into the market from third-and fourth-tier cities is not only the initial choice of companies such as Weimai and Health Road, but also the strategy of Internet companies such as Pinduoduo and Meituan when they enter the medical field later.
Due to the lack of medical insurance payment, the overall plate of Internet medical care is still too small. In the eyes of many Internet medical practitioners, it is far more important than "internal competition" to be able to make the online "cake" bigger together in the huge medical market.
"haven't you noticed? Since 219, the financing of Internet medical care has disappeared on a large scale, and only some of them are concentrated in large-scale financing. " The above-mentioned investors pointed out that there are more and more money, but fewer and fewer Internet companies can make money. Now the industry itself can't make a profit, and its hematopoietic capacity is insufficient, so it can only rely on continuous financing.
anyone who can get a large sum of money must have a head start in the industry. In 22, Ali Health made a new increase of HK$ 1 billion, and then JD Health completed the Series B financing of US$ 83 million before listing, and raised HK$ 26.4 billion on the first day of listing.
In subdividing the vertical track, Dingdang Kuaiyao raised 1 billion yuan, Micropulse raised 1 million dollars, and Dr. Chun Yu also completed tens of millions of yuan in Series E financing.
This is the fifth financing of Micro-Pulse Medical since its establishment five years ago. Affected by the epidemic situation in COVID-19, investors extended the investigation period of micro-veins.
Wang Yu and his team finally decided to take out the money because of "the cooperation between Xiaomai and public hospitals in third-and fourth-tier cities, which brought offline to online, from in-hospital to out-of-hospital, and increased the stickiness of local users. The COVID-19 epidemic greatly reduced offline visits, which really affected the data of Xiaomai", said Wang Yu.
With the help of the epidemic, the number of online users of Internet medical services has increased sharply. Especially after the "city closure" in Wuhan, Ping An Hao doctors and micro-doctors have opened online consultation and medicine delivery platforms, and the medical insurance department has also given timely support, taking the lead in opening medical insurance payment in Wuhan.
As of September 14th, the rescue platform of micro-medicine has provided 2.21 million free services, with a total of over 15 million visits. On January 21st, Micropulse also took the lead in launching the platform of free public consultation in COVID-19. By March, Micropulse had consulted more than 2 million patients online nationwide, and the whole network reached more than 75 million users.
The traffic of giants such as Ali, JD.COM and Ping An Hao Doctor increased more obviously. During the epidemic, the number of newly registered users of Dr. Ping An's mobile phone application (APP) increased by 1 times, and the average daily consultation volume of new users was 9 times that of usual. As of February 1th, Ali Health has accumulated more than 1.4 million online consultations. As of April 3th, the number of free online consultations in JD Health has reached 11 million.
with the traffic, there is a strong willingness of public hospitals to embrace the internet. Wang Hang, the founder of Good Doctor Online, has been receiving advice from public hospitals since the first half of this year on how to build an Internet hospital.
Enterprises that build Internet platforms for hospitals can be roughly divided into two categories. One is to charge public hospitals to build a complete Internet hospital system for them, that is, to buy and sell with one hammer. The other type is willing to establish a port for the hospital for free, and at the same time access to its own platform operation, and tap the value through the transformation of patient traffic.
"One-shot trading has a shorter capital chain and a clear profit model. In contrast, the platform-based Internet medical service has a longer capital chain, greater uncertainty and more room for imagination. This is why Ali Health can have a market value of more than 2 billion yuan when it is unprofitable. When JD Health went public, the market value of the industry reached a new high, and it invested in growth. " The above investor analysis.
once the online platform is connected to the medical insurance payment in the whole country, the richest enterprises will run out first, no matter in several cities, such as JD.COM, Ali and Ping An Doctor with the highest market value. For other enterprises, the user stickiness accumulated in the early stage will be tested.
Although Xiaomai is a platform-based enterprise, Wang Yu saw the advantage of Xiaomai's offline hospital as its business center in the later period of the epidemic, and realized rapid "blood transfusion" in a single-point hospital, betting that its model could be quickly replicated and spread.
No money is easy to get. After each round of financing, there will be pressure to increase the price.
"The amplification speed should be 2-3 times that of the past", and Qiu Jialin is not immune to this situation. In the past two years, Microvein has newly covered 11 provinces, nearly 1 new cities and more than 1, cooperative hospitals.
When talking about cooperation with more than 1 hospitals, Xiaomai went for deep cooperation. It is necessary to dig deep into specialized diseases, covering more than 3 specialized diseases such as gynecology, obstetrics, pediatrics, orthopedics, cancer and chronic diseases, so as to meet the differentiated service needs of patients and form a competitive barrier based on regional and local hospitals. This is a move to make full use of its strength.
Similarly, Micro-Medicine originally docked with 18, pharmacies for users to purchase drugs online, but this was not enough to stick to users. Therefore, Micro-Medicine further opened up the cooperation between pharmacies and community health centers, forming a pharmacy+clinic model to increase users' stickiness.
Dr. Ping An has also applied AI technology to nearly 15 offline hospitals to improve user stickiness, forming a service model of "internet plus artificial intelligence+1,-person-scale self-owned medical team", which runs through online and offline.
However, in the eyes of the above-mentioned investors, this kind of user stickiness is "risky". The real stickiness of patients is still in public hospitals. Who can sign up, who can consult and return to the clinic, and who can have more in-depth cooperation. Then once the cooperative hospitals of public hospitals change, users will be lost in large numbers.
in order to increase the "bundling" with doctors, and then "sticking" users, Internet medical services mostly try to package the consultation provided by doctors with the extended services provided by the Internet platform through the business model of cooperation with hospitals or doctors, that is, to realize service value-added, user transformation and further expand the influence of doctors. A good doctor is to use a huge group of online doctors to level the Internet medical circle.
The purpose is the same, and the realization paths are different. Microvein selection is based on the localization service of public hospitals. In cooperation with public hospitals, enterprises are inevitably the weak side, and the path of micro-pulse selection is not easy to take. Fortunately, Qiu Jialin has hardly encountered the termination of cooperation caused by the change of hospital leadership.
In fact, compared with the innate genes of giants such as Ping An Good Doctor, self-insurance users, JD Health's own shopping malls, and micro-medical good government relations, there are few alternative ways for start-ups to develop Internet medical care today.
Qiu Jialin, who comes from the hospital information industry, is familiar with the way of cooperation between public hospitals. "So from the beginning, he chose the direction of helping public hospitals and doctors improve their income space, and the deep cooperation that is beneficial to hospitals, doctors and patients can be sustained."
However, due to the need to optimize offline and online services at the same time, the labor cost of Micropulse is relatively higher. The offline team of a large hospital can be as many as thirty or forty people. Although the overall profit has not been achieved, in a single point hospital or a single city, Micropulse can achieve profit within half a year at the earliest.
"Whether the single-point profit data can be realized in the subsequent expansion is a test for the micro-pulse." An investor who has inspected the micro-pulse said.
The article comes from WeChat WeChat official account Huoli (ID: huoli Buluo), which is a new media project of Caijing magazine's technology and health team, insisting on independence, exclusiveness and originality.