China's BangEr Orthopedic raises $46m

The company operates 14 hospitals with 3,000 staff and 4,000 beds, performing more than 20,000 surgeries annually.

Banger’s story started in Taizhou, a third-tier city in Zhejiang province where most people made their living in factories. Many accidents resulting in finger amputations happened each year. The patients had to be sent to the city of Hangzhou for operations. Travel delays often meant that the best  hours for finger replantation were wasted on the road.

Dong Cheng, founder of BangEr, acquired a small local hospital in 2001 to focus on orthopedic surgeries and quickly built a reputation in Taizhou for saving people’s fingers. By 2014, BangEr had grown to five hospitals and received a RMB90 million Series A from Eight Roads. Bei Huang, a vice president at Eigth Roads, joined BangEr full-time as CEO and focused on bringing advanced overseas medical equipment and technologies to local private hospitals.

In the past decade, multiple policies have been introduced to encourage the development of a private medical sector in China to supplement the public system. BangEr was among the first batch of private hospital operators able to access the Basic Medical Insurance (BMI) scheme, which allows patients to have part of their medical expenses covered by the government-run insurance plan.

BangEr aims to bring down medical costs by optimizing the operational efficiency of its hospitals. This includes carefully managing the use of medicine and equipment to reduce waste. 

The company raised a RMB200 Series B from GP Capital, an investor backed by the Shanghai municipal government, in 2016. Eight Roads  re-upped in the round. Qiming Venture Partners led a RMB300 million Series C in 2018.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Healthcare
• China
• Shenzhen Fortune Venture Capital
• Cenova Ventures