Ping An Healthcare and Technology is set to unveil tie-ups with more than 20 firms, including China Mobile and China Everbright Bank, as the mainland’s largest online healthcare platform by users seeks to boost revenue and reduce losses.
The cross-marketing blitz, to be announced next week, will help the five-year-old startup – better known as Ping An Good Doctor – target higher-paying customers whose needs are not met by the state-run medical system, Wang Tao, chairman and chief executive, said in an interview on Tuesday.
“We have many middle-class people with the money to spend but are lacking the channels to upgrade their medical services experience due to capacity limitations of the state medical system,” he said after the company reported lower losses in the first half.
“We hired many of them [state hospital doctors] to be our full-time doctors to serve such needs.”
Ping An Good Doctor posted a net loss of 272.5 million yuan (US$38.7 million) for the six months ended June, down from 444.2 million yuan (US$63 million) in the year-earlier period.
In June, the company launched “Private Doctor,” a family doctor service comprising four packages targeting children, adults, and seniors, for the nation’s more than 100 million middle-class families.