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"Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" August 16 (Reporter Huang Xinyi)There are reports that Ant Group is planning to acquire Good Doctor Online. In response, Good Doctor Online said that the company would not comment on the news and that the official news should be taken as the basis. Ant Group did not respond to this.

This is not the first time that Haodafu has been rumored to be acquired by a large company. Previously, there were media reports that Ali Health was negotiating an acquisition with Haodafu Online. However, both Ali Health and Haodafu Online denied this at the time.

The reporter noticed that the consultation function of "Hao Daifu" has been embedded in the Alipay APP. After completing the D round of financing in 2017, "Hao Daifu" has not made any progress in the new capital market and has faced the dilemma of multiple shareholders proposing to withdraw their investment. If it can be acquired by a large company, it is expected to ease its own operating pressure.

▍“Good Doctor” has been embedded in Alipay

Enter the medical and health channel on the Alipay homepage and select "Online Consultation". You can see the words "Good Doctor Selects National Experts" in the scrolling banner in the middle of the screen, with the three words "Good Doctor" in eye-catching red.

After clicking to enter, the content presented on the page is consistent with the "Expert Consultation" interface in the Haodaifu Online App, providing online consultation services such as graphic and text consultation and telephone consultation.

The reporter sorted the prices by price, with the most expensive doctor's text and picture consultation costing 1,200 yuan/2 days, and the telephone consultation costing 1,500 yuan/10 minutes. The cheapest was free text and picture and telephone consultation related to brain function.

As one of the earliest companies involved in Internet medical care, Haodafu Online received a round of financing led by Tencent in 2017, at which time its valuation reached US$1.3 billion to US$1.4 billion, or about RMB 10 billion, making it a unicorn. However, financing has since stagnated.

Wang Hang, CEO of Haodaifu Online, once said in an interview with Economic Observer: Starting from the first half of 2022, he has frequently met with Haodaifu's shareholders, and was asked by them: When can they withdraw and get the money?

In 2022, Wang Hang issued a "Letter to All Employees", clearly proposing to "get rid of dependence on financing and decisively become a self-sustaining enterprise". After that, Good Doctor Online made many commercial efforts, including focusing on membership services, launching rehabilitation follow-up service packages, etc., and achieved a balance between income and expenditure in the first quarter of 2023.

However, Wang Hang issued an internal "Company's Latest Situation Statement" on June 8, 2023, pointing out that since a series of business adjustments started in December 2022, the company's losses have improved rapidly.However, the company was faced with huge pressure from shareholders to withdraw their capital and demand redemption. Many shareholders proposed to withdraw their capital and demanded the company to repurchase and redeem their shares, but the company did not have enough cash on its books, and the new strategic investors could not satisfy the old shareholders in terms of company valuation.The old shareholders urged the company to immediately change and adjust its original development strategy and improve its earnings quickly.

▍Being acquired by a large company may be a good destination

At present, most Internet medical companies are facing difficulties in commercialization. 1Yow.com, which went public in 2018, had an issue price of $14, but it fell below the issue price on the first day of listing. As of the close of the U.S. stock market on August 15, 2024, 1Yow.com closed at $0.98 per share. The financial report shows that its net loss in 2023 was 393 million yuan.

Good Doctor Online, which has not yet gone public, is facing shareholder pressure and operational challenges, and has been rumored to be acquired by major companies.

In August 2023, there were media reports that a major Internet company wanted to acquire Good Doctor Online and had already made an offer. This year, there were also reports that Ali Health was negotiating an acquisition with Good Doctor Online. However, both Ali Health and Good Doctor Online denied this at the time.

Alipay, the subsidiary of Ant Group, has been involved in the field of digital healthcare as early as 2014. Public data shows that more than 3,600 hospitals in more than 300 cities across the country provide one-stop digital medical services on Alipay. The number of users who have activated their medical insurance codes through Alipay has reached nearly 600 million, with more than 200 million monthly active users and 13 million medical services used every day.

In terms of medical services, Alipay and the Zhejiang Health Commission launched the country's first AI medical assistant "Anzhener", which is used in nearly 100 hospitals in Zhejiang Province, including the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine and the Run Run Shaw Hospital Affiliated to Zhejiang University School of Medicine, serving more than one million people.

Industry analysts pointed out that Ant Group has strong traffic and platform advantages, while Good Doctor Online has tens of thousands of active famous doctors. If the news is true, Ant Group can use the Good Doctor Online platform to further explore the business model in the medical and health field and realize long-term layout, while Good Doctor can also alleviate its own problems of insufficient profitability and commercial transformation.