ByteDance acquires Chinese medical platform for $72m
ByteDance, the PE-backed owner of TikTok and the Toutiao news aggregation service, has acquired VC-backed Chinese medical information platform Baikemy for RMB500 million ($72 million).
It will facilitate exits for Cenova Ventures and BlueRun Ventures, the latter of which led Baikemy's Series A and B rounds in 2018 and 2019.
Founded in 2010, Baikemy positions itself as China’s earliest and largest platform dedicated to the production and distribution of authoritative medical science knowledge. It focuses on professional-generated content (PGC) instead of user-generated content (UGC).
“While health and medical knowledge have become the public’s largest demand for popular science content, the main channels on the internet such as UGCs have created serious social problems and generated a large amount of information junk,” Baikemy said in a statement.
The company plans to leverage access to Toutiao to promote and enhance its offering. This will include improvements to content, the addition of more medical experts as contributors, and establishing new applications in areas such as medical science education and health treatments.
Baikemy’s team currently includes more than 100 medical professionals, who collaborate with the top-100 hospitals in China as well as 10,000 doctors. The platform hosts an array of explainer videos by doctors about diseases such as flu, pneumonia, and depression, among others. It also features a service where medical professionals answer general questions about health issues and diseases.
Other recent investment in this space includes a RMB100 million Series B for Mingyi Zhonghe led by Sinovation Ventures. Mingyi Zhonghe differentiates itself by focusing on China’s rural clinics and less developed areas. It is also active in the pharmacy supply chain by directly matching pharmaceutical companies with rural clinics that can’t sufficiently source high-quality drugs.
Bytedance is said to have a valuation of around $75 billion, although this has come under closer scrutiny with expectations of an IPO in the near term amid negotiations to sell its key asset, the video-sharing app TikTok. Last week, Microsoft Corporation indicated that it was still interested in acquiring TikTok despite threats that it could be banned by US authorities.
Bytedance’s PE backers include General Atlantic, KKR, Primavera Capital, and SoftBank Investment Advisors, all of which contributed to a $3 billion investment in 2018. Previous investors include CCB International Asset Management, Sequoia Capital China, Weibo, and SIG China. Tiger Global Investment made an investment of undisclosed size in March.
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