China's Tencent Trusted Doctor, a venture backed by tech giant Tencent Holdings, announced that it had raised $250M in a fundraising round. The investment was led by Country Garden Holdings, Tencent Holdings and Sequoia Capital, Tencent Trusted Doctor said in a statement.

The fundraising marked the first investment since the entity was formed through a merger of Tencent Doctorwork and Trusted Doctors last year.

Tencent Trusted Doctor said it connects 440,000 certified doctors with more than 10 million patients online, offering services from online consulting to e-commerce to physical checks.

What’s the trend

Tencent has been very active in the digital healthcare space – in late January this year, the Chinese multinational investment holding conglomerate signed a strategic collaboration agreement with German multinational pharmaceutical, chemical and life sciences company Merck. The collaboration will primarily focus on increasing public disease awareness and providing more accessible healthcare services via digital platforms in China.

WebMD, an American online publisher of news and information pertaining to human health, well-being and drugs, teamed up with Tencent in July 2018 to introduce the health information platform to Asia.

Other market players

Tencent Trusted Doctor is among a number of technology-driven firms looking to shake up China’s overburdened public healthcare market, with increasingly affluent consumers willing to pay for more convenient access to doctors and health services.

Another major Chinese online healthcare platform, Ping An Good Doctor, has reached 265 million registered users at the end of 2018 and accumulated nearly 410 million pieces of consultation data, covering several aspects of healthcare such as user consultation, drug purchase and health management, eventually generating 35,000 labels for various diseases.

WeDoctor, which is also backed by Tencent holdings, raised $500M from investors in a private share sale in May 2018. WeDoctor’s web-based service offers users appointment booking, medical education, online diagnosis, and consultations with live doctors across several medical specialties directly through the platform. The company was founded in 2010, and released a mobile app version of its services in June 2014.

On the record

“Healthcare has always been a highly-regarded industry at Tencent. Trusted Doctor can rely on Tencent’s user traffic and technical support to “bridge” the combination of medical and technology services, to further enhance the user experience. Tencent hopes to help elevate the healthcare industry, bringing greater value to enterprises, patients and more users,” said Tang Daosheng, President of Tencent Cloud and Smart Industry Group in a statement.