Chinese online drug store Yao123 raises $45m Series B
Healthcare-focused GTJA Investment Group has led a RMB300 million ($45 million) Series B round for Chinese online pharmacy operator Yao123.
Other participants include Yicun Capital, Galaxy Yuanhui Investment and Ample Harvest Finance. The company raised RMB120 million for a Series A round in 2017, featuring GPs such as Lang Sheng Investment, Shanghai Yunfeng Capital Management. Both re-upped for the latest round.
The new capital will be used to accelerate the development of the company’s online-to-offline platform. Established in 2015 as an e-commerce unit under state-owned China National Pharmaceutical Group (CNPG), Yao123 offers more than 20,000 kinds of drugs, including 12,000 are prescription drugs as well as supplements, medical devices, cosmetics, and daily necessities.
In addition to its own platform, the company has a presence on e-commerce sites Taobao and JD.com and social media app WeChat.
With the support of CNPG's mature supply chains, Yao123 allows customers to collect goods at its parent’s offline stores or have them delivered. The company also has a team of doctors that provide medical consultations to patients online. It claims to have posted a 61% year-on-year increase in operating revenue for 2018.
Online pharmacies - B2B and B2C-oriented - are expanding rapidly 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. Other players that have raised private funding in this space include Yaoshibang and Jianke. The latter is also backed by GTJA.
GTJA was founded in Shenzhen in 2001 to make healthcare industry investments across the angel, venture capital, private equity, and M&A stages. The firm claims to have the largest healthcare investment team in China and assets under management of RMB20 billion ($2.9 billion). It has raised 24 healthcare funds to date and invested more than 130 companies.
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