TPG leads $220m round for China's Dingdang Health
TPG Capital has led a $220 million round for Chinese online pharmacy services provider Dingdang Health.
OrbiMed, Redview Capital, Summer Capital, Valliance Asset Management, and Yingke PE also participated, as did Orchid Asia. It comes less than eight months after an approximately $150 million investment, billed as an extended Series B round, featuring Dragon Gate Investment Partners, SBCVC, and CMB international.
"With this round of financing, Dingdang Health will press ahead with its online-to-offline strategy to cover services including medical care, medicine delivery and medical insurance,” Yang Wenlong, founder and chairman of Dingdang, said in a statement.
“Riding on the new trend of online medical care and medication services amid COVID-19, we aim at providing all-encompassing online services catering to various needs including consultation, drug purchase, chronic disease management and psychological consultation through product upgrades and technological innovation.”
Launched in 2015, Dingdang describes itself as a pioneer in digital healthcare services in China. The company, also known as Dingdang Kuaiyao, specializes in on-demand medicine delivery, 24-hour remote pharmacist consultation, and online insurance claims.
As of October, Dingdang operated its own smart offline pharmacies in about 10 major cities. Much of this footprint overlaps with that of local online-to-offline (O2O) services leader Meituan-Dianping, which teamed up with pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) last year to explore a similar business model.
Dingdang sources medicines directly from factories and partners with 600 pharmaceutical companies, including GSK, Bayer, and Kobayashi. In central districts of its core markets, medicine delivery is also available on a 24-hour basis and within 28 minutes of ordering. The ecosystem is managed with a suite of technologies, including artificial intelligence, 5G, and internet-of-things.
The O2O approach is touted as an “internet plus healthcare” model that is transforming the local healthcare market by addressing unmet needs in the traditional pharmacy space, including chronic disease management support. It is also said to help companies in the broader healthcare industry cooperate with each other.
“The public demand for digitalization and healthcare has become increasingly acute under the new normal due to COVID-19. Dingdang Health’s business model perfectly combines both digitalization and healthcare,” Lydia Cai, a managing director at TPG, added.
Dingdang has raised more than $500 million to date, according to AVCJ Research, with early investors including Tong Dao Capital and Chunfeng Venture Capital. It has also received significant strategic support from players such as Taikang Life Insurance and Haier Biomedical, a cold chain provider under Haier Group, as well as Sinopharm-CICC Capital, a firm set up by China International Capital Corporation and Sinopharm Group.
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