China drug trading platform Yaoshibang raises $133m Series D
Chinese B2B pharmaceutical trading and education platform Yaoshibang has raised $133 million in a Series D round of funding led by Tiger Global Management, H Capital, and DCM.
Founded in 2015 by a former executive at Chinese real estate portal Soufang.com, the company distributes medicines, medical devices, and other personal care products at wholesale prices to nearly 200,000 pharmacies across more than 40 cities. It is one of 40 online pharmacies licensed to sell and distribute pharmaceutical products domestically.
"After three years of rapid expansion, we have achieved our goal of reaching GMV of RMB10 billion this year. In addition, our monthly orders have also reached one million and we deeply believe that the penetration of online pharmacies will keep increasing going forward amid the strong demand of users who don’t have good access to those products,” said Buzhen Zhang, the company's CEO, in a statement.
Yaoshibang has also expanded its portfolio to include a drug database that covers over 100,000 drugs for 10,000 diseases as well as training and career development services for pharmacists. More than 2,000 pharmacists completed its courses as of June.
Online pharmacies, for both B2B and B2C platforms, are growing quickly in China, with the segment seeing compound annual revenue growth of more than 69% over the past five years, according to the China Food & Drug Administration. Drug sales via B2B platforms accounted for 94.2% of all drugs sold online, Ministry of Commerce statistics show.
Yaoshibang raised RMB71 million in Series A funding from Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical, Co-Power Capital, and Ivy Capital in 2016. A Series B round of RMB110 million followed in 2017 co-led by Green Pine and Fosun, with Co-Power and Ivy both re-upping.
In June, the company raised an RMB420 million Series C across two tranches. The first was led by Shunwei Capital Partners with participation from Green Pine Capital Partners and Elevation China Capital, while DCM led the second with SIG Asia in a supporting role.
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