Tencent leads $74m round for China crowdfunding platform
Shuidi, the operator of Shuidichou, a Chinese crowdfunding platform for patients with critical medical conditions, has raised RMB500 million ($74 million) in a Series B round of funding led by existing investor Tencent Holdings.
Other participants include Gaorong Capital, IDG Capital, Bluerun Ventures, Sinovation Ventures, DST Global founder Yuri Milner, and Xiaoguang Wu, former head of Tencent’s e-commerce business.
Shuidi has three major products: crowdfunding platform Shuidichou, mutual help platform Shuidi Huzhu and commercial insurance plan platform Shuidibao. Shuidichou allows users, most of whom are patients with a critical illness or relatives of patients, to upload their personal information and the status of their disease to the platform to get donations to cover their medical costs.
The company does not charge any commission from the users. After Shuidichou verifies the users’ information and the authenticity of their medical situation, it will give them access to withdraw the donations. It claims to have helped tens of thousands of patients to raise RMB12 billion, with over 400 million donations made through its platform.
Shuidihuzhu has adopted a community model which encourages members of the community to help each other in the event of critical medical conditions. Users pay a fee to join the online community, which is added to a pool that helps members or their families who have a critical illness to partially cover their treatment. Shuidibao offers commercial insurance plans sold by 50 insurers, claiming to have served over 10 million users. All three platforms mainly target residents of China’s lower-tier cities.
“Shuidi has become the industry leader in the online healthcare domain in China’s third, fourth or even fifth-tier cities. We are bullish on the potential of the online healthcare industry and the strong execution capacity of the management team of Shuidi,” said Haiyang Yu, a managing director at Tencent’s M&A department.
Shuidi Huzhu raised RMB50 million from Tencent, Chuxin Capital, Gaorong, IDG, Meituan-Dianping, ZhenFund and Dianliang Jijin in 2016 in angel funding. It raised a further RMB160 million in a Series A from investors including Tencent, Bluerun, Sinovation, Meituan, Gaorong and IDG in 2017, according to AVCJ Research.
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