Eric Ng · · 3 min readPing An Good Doctor launches new services, partnerships for China’s middle class
Ping An Healthcare and Technology is set to unveil tie-ups with more than 20 firms, including China Mobile and China Everbright Bank, as the mainland’s largest online healthcare platform by users seeks to boost revenue and reduce losses.
Photo credit: sheeler / 123RF
The cross-marketing blitz, to be announced next week, will help the five-year-old startup – better known as Ping An Good Doctor – target higher-paying customers whose needs are not met by the state-run medical system, Wang Tao, chairman and chief executive, said in an interview on Tuesday.
“We have many middle-class people with the money to spend but are lacking the channels to upgrade their medical services experience due to capacity limitations of the state medical system,” he said after the company reported lower losses in the first half. “We hired many of them [state hospital doctors] to be our full-time doctors to serve such needs.”
Ping An Good Doctor posted a net loss of 272.5 million yuan (US$38.7 million) for the six months ended June, down from 444.2 million yuan (US$63 million) in the year-earlier period.
According to a Bloomberg poll of analysts, the company is expected to almost break even in 2021.
In June, the company launched “Private Doctor,” a family doctor service comprising four packages targeting children, adults, and seniors, for the nation’s more than 100 million middle-class families.
With annual fees ranging from 1,099 yuan (US$156) to 7,999 yuan (US$1,135) reduced by up to 59% to as low as 499 yuan (US$71) as part of a promotion period, users are entitled to unlimited online consultations, medical appointment services, certain health checks, discounts on medicines, and accompanied hospital visit services for seniors.
The new service is an upgraded version of its existing 199 yuan (US$28) Health 360 product, which also offers online consultation, facilitation of offline medical treatments, and express medicine deliveries.
It aims to address China’s uneven and insufficient supply of healthcare resources, which gives rise to long commute and waiting times at clinics and hospitals.
According to a recent Daiwa Capital Markets research report, the company is targeting 10 million users but management has been reluctant to provide a time frame.
“Management expects this new membership product to deliver substantial revenue growth for family doctor services over the second half of this year to 2021, as it anticipates strong user traffic and a high average selling price,” Daiwa’s analysts Leon Qi and Kevin Jiang wrote.
Assisted by AI and big data capabilities, Ping An Good Doctor aims for each private doctor to serve 10,000 users in the long term, compared with a current service capacity of 3,000 users per doctor, they said.
Wang declined to give performance targets.
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