Is the drop chip in the garb of "public welfare" a pseudo-charity or a real business?
The advent of a major disease often puts the economic situation of ordinary people in crisis and even destroys a happy family. It is precisely for this reason that Waterdrop Chip, as a social fundraising platform that provides free help, has gained great popularity in just a few years and is considered a public welfare organization.
However, recently, some netizens posted an article saying: "Waterdrop fundraising is crowdfunded and promoted in the name of public welfare, and the income is three or seven points." Patients waiting for life-saving money only take 30%, and the water drop chip platform actually takes 70%, and the dedication and love are harvested. ”
Some netizens questioned: "Water drop chips are listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the United States? What do they profit from? ”
It is understood that Waterdrop Company is a very young enterprise, founded by Shen Peng in 2016.
Only a few months after its establishment, Waterdrop Mutual Aid and Waterdrop Chip have been launched one after another, the former is a membership model, to pay membership fees to enjoy health mutual aid, while the latter is for patients with serious diseases, providing free social fundraising services.
Since then, the development of Waterdrop has flourished, and it only took a few years to become an industry giant. By the end of 2020, Waterdrop had raised 37 billion for more than 1.7 million patients, and the number of Waterdrop Mutual Aid members exceeded 100 million.
On May 7, 2021, Waterdrop was officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming the "first insurtech stock in China" in one fell swoop.
According to the data released by Waterdrop, in 2022, Waterdrop's annual net operating income was 2.802 billion yuan, and the net profit was 608 million yuan, compared with the net loss of 1.574 billion yuan in 2021, achieving a turnaround.
According to the annual report, Waterdrop has three industrial segments: Waterdrop Insurance, Waterdrop Chips and Yifan Pharmaceutical. Its main income comes from insurance-related businesses. In 2022, the company's insurance-related income reached 2.559 billion yuan, accounting for 91.34% of the annual operating income, mainly divided into insurance brokerage income and technical service income.
In April 2022, Waterdrop Chip began to charge a 3% fundraising service fee based on the amount raised (a maximum of 5,000 yuan for a single fundraising case). This enabled the waterdrop fundraising business to achieve an annual fundraising service fee of 156 million yuan in only 8 months, accounting for 5.57% of the company's annual operating income.
However, in June last year, it was reported that on some shopping platforms and social platforms, there are serious disease crowdfunding "professional promoters", who take a low of 50% to a maximum of 70%, and some "fundraising promoters" even require that the collection account provided by them be filled in the fundraising link.
A professional fundraising promoter said that he has the information of the promoter who is specifically responsible for group promotion, and will give patients links such as water drop fundraising and easy fundraising every day, and the daily "performance" of the arranged promoter is about 1,000 yuan to 3,000 yuan.
If the daily fundraising is less than 300 yuan, the promoter will not take a share; If it is higher than 300 yuan, it will be divided into four and six, "you four I six".
In response to this matter, Waterdrop also urgently responded at that time, saying that the so-called fundraising intermediary was operated by some third-party commercial organizations that were maliciously promoted to provide fundraisers with improper fundraising services.
In response to the current question of the profit situation by netizens, Waterdrop said in its latest announcement that Waterdrop has never made a profit since its launch in July 2016, and there is still a considerable loss gap.
Waterdrop also said that in order to protect the hope of millions of families seeking help, we have never hesitated to invest in Waterdrop. These investments come from the income of Waterdrop's insurance, pharmaceutical innovation and other businesses, and the synergy of multiple businesses has realized the sustainable development of Waterdrop, a non-profit business.
Kindness cannot be disappointed, and Waterdrop Chip will continue to improve around the three aspects of "true and transparent case information, safe and transparent fund destination, and reasonable and transparent platform rules", and we have been working hard.
Author | Zhang Xiaolei