China O2O medicine platform raises $150m

Taikang Life Insurance and Haier Biomedical, a cold chain services provider for the biomedical industry under Haier Group, also participated. Existing investors SBCVC, CMB International, and Sinopharm-CICC Capital, a firm set up by China International Capital Corporation and Hong Kong-listed Sinopharm Group, re-upped.

Founded in 2014 and launched in 2015, Dingdang sources medicines directly from factories and partners with 600 pharmaceutical companies worldwide, including Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Kobayashi.  It also provides delivery within 28 minutes in central districts in some cities.

Dingdang’s offline presence aims to create a closed-loop ecosystem from consultation to medicine purchase and insurance policy claim. The company operates its own offline pharmacies in over 10 major cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, many of which are listed on delivery giant Meituan-Dianping’s services platform. Its pharmacists provide 24-hour online consultation.

New developments include introduction of a specialized chronic disease medication and management service. The business aims to provide low-cost drugs, with value-add services including online consultation and online insurance policy claims.

“The new round of funding will be mainly used to accelerate the company’s rollout in China’s urban areas, by landing in 10 more cities in mainland China by the end of this year, and covering all of China’s first, second, and third-tier cities in 2021,” said Wenlong Yang, Dingdang’s founder.

SBCVC led a RMB600 million Series B in March last year. Dingdang raised an angel round led by Chunfeng Venture Capital in 2015, and a Series A of RMB300 million from Tongdao Capital in 2016.

Dingdang competes with local e-commerce giants JD.com, Alibaba and Meituan, which all have their own O2O medicine retail businesses promising deliveries as fast as 30 minutes. Meituan, which is able to leverage its food delivery capabilities, covers a much larger geographical area than Dingdang.

It extends a string of related activity in the Chinese pharmacy space, including FountainVest Partners and Primavera Capital paying $557 million for a 24.78% stake in pharmacy chain Laobaixing last November. In the disease management segment, Zhiyun Health has raised more than RMB1 billion across two rounds this year featuring CICC Capital among others.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Greater China
• Healthcare
• Early-stage
• Pharmaceuticals
• China
• CICC
• e-commerce
• Logistics
• TMT