Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 vb arterial network
"In the next twenty years, if we can contribute to the development of life sciences and medicine, and make a little contribution to public health, life will be more meaningful."
Recently, Wang Xiaochuan sent an internal letter officially announcing the resignation of Sogou AS CEO and saying that he would start again in the life sciences and medical fields to create more possibilities and value. The letter specifically mentioned that life sciences have been lingering in his mind for more than two decades, and after leaving Sogou, there is an opportunity to open a new chapter. "A happy farewell will boost a new journey of life."
It is worth mentioning that Wang Xiaochuan's attention to life sciences has been continuing. For example, on October 19, Wang Xiaochuan invested in DeepCare, a medical technology company focused on oral artificial intelligence applications, becoming the second public investment event this year after investing in the intestinal medical technology developer Zeitgeon Research Institute in August.
Not only that, as early as 2016, Sogou, which was at the helm of Wang Xiaochuan, was trying the Internet medical business, that is, launching Sogou Ming Doctor. As a medical science popularization platform, Sogou Mingyi aims to achieve services such as "intelligent consultation" and "finding a doctor" through AI technology, and has launched functions such as "AI nutritionist" (2020) and "expert recommendation" (2021) in the follow-up. It is not difficult to find that Wang Xiaochuan has been involved in the medical field through sogou and investment, and after leaving office, he personally went down to enter the deep water area.
Interestingly, not only Wang Xiaochuan, but also Internet giants seem to have a preference for the field of life sciences. For example, just this year, Huang Zheng, founder of Pinduoduo, and Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, also expressed the same desire to enter the field of life sciences when they left office. In addition, Baidu founder Robin Li also expressed interest in life sciences, and in September last year, he formally established the life science platform company "Baitu Shengke"; Chen Tianqiao, the founder of Shanda Network, and his wife Luo Qianqian, a brain science research institution funded by his wife Luo Qianqian in 2016, are used for basic brain biological research.
It can be seen that after the Internet giants have made good achievements in their own fields, they are actively engaged in the field of life sciences, what are the considerations behind them? Where has it been progressed? Will they eventually be able to run to the sea of stars in the life sciences? In view of these problems, the arterial network will be sorted out and analyzed next.
<h2>Behind the enthusiasm for life sciences, what is the plan of the Internet giants? </h2>
Behind the bet on life sciences is that internet giants are gambling on a new era.
"It's easier for us to pay attention to changes in business models and updates to brand channels, and rarely notice that technological changes are already brewing." In an internal letter released in May this year, Zhang Yiming said, "The impact of life sciences and other fields on human life has dawned. ”
You know, every technological change will bring huge industrial opportunities. For example, in the decade from 2010 to 2020, based on the popularity of mobile terminals and the iteration of communication technology, the mobile Internet ushered in a great development, making the production of industry giants such as ByteDance, Didi, Pinduoduo, Kuaishou, and Meituan in the fields of content distribution, smart travel, social e-commerce, short video, and new retail. Internet giants who have experienced this wave of growth dividends naturally know how tempting the non-linear growth brought about by the tide of stepping on the chinese era is. Therefore, when keenly smelling that the medical health industry is on the eve of the outbreak, the Internet giants will naturally not miss this wave of industrial opportunities.
"The field of health is done well, and we can recreate a Jingdong." Liu Qiangdong said so when he began to lay out the medical and health track. As early as a few years ago, when Ma Yun proposed the "double H strategy (health, happiness)", he also predicted that the most likely field to give birth to the next BAT magnitude enterprise was in medical health.
In line with the actions of the big guys, capital has also been frantically flocking to the life sciences in recent years. According to the data of the arterial orange database, there were 2199 financing incidents in the global medical and health industry in 2020, and the total amount of financing reached a record high of 74.9 billion US dollars (about 516.93 billion yuan), an increase of about 41% year-on-year; among them, biomedicine with high research and development difficulties became the first segment of the segment with 36.9 billion US dollars.
In addition to the field of venture capital, at the national level, biomedicine and health have also become the top priorities of the 14th Five-Year Plan: in the recently released "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Biomedical Industry", the state once again emphasizes the strategic emerging industry status of the biomedical industry, clearly accelerates the development of biomedicine and other industries, and makes the bioeconomy bigger and stronger.
It is not difficult to find that from multiple dimensions, the life science field is in an important historical opportunity period for the great development of industrialization.
Of course, the change of technology, the importance of the country, and the opportunities of the industry are all external factors, and the choice of Internet giants naturally has internal factors.
The first reason is that some of the big guys themselves are full of love for the life sciences. Taking Zhang Yiming as an example, when he was admitted to Nankai University in 2001, he applied for the biology major, but later entered the computer field due to transfer.
The second reason may be the main reason why more big guys are investing in the life sciences field, that is, to find a second or third growth curve for enterprises to develop in the future. As Huang Zheng said when he resigned as chairman of Pinduoduo at the beginning of the year, he will devote himself to research in the field of food science and life sciences, and explore a new space for high-quality and in-depth development for Pinduoduo in ten years.
In fact, at present, many Internet giants have begun to get involved in the field of medical and health care, and have made achievements. For example, Ali Health and Jingdong Health have been listed, with a market value of more than 100 billion, while Baidu Health, Xiaohe Health (under byte), Kuaishou Health, etc. have also been working for a period of time.
In the face of the vast market and opportunities of medical and health care, various Internet giants have embarked on a journey, where have they come so far? What kind of path choices do they have?
<h2>Embark on a journey of medical health: three paths, three challenges</h2>
Although the Internet giants have collectively embarked on the journey of life sciences, their respective paths are different, and they can be roughly divided into three categories.
The first category is the research funding faction, that is, the Internet tycoons set up science awards through donations to reward scientific research, so as to inspire more people to devote themselves to research in the field of life sciences.
Typical representatives include Lenovo Group CEO Yang Yuanqing and Baidu founder Robin Li, the two of them in 2015 with the founder of Zhen Fund Xu Xiaoping, Peking University professor Rao Yi and several other scientists and entrepreneurs to create a future forum, in this forum, they announced that they will set up a folk science award, and in 2016 officially launched, that is, the "Future Science Award", the award set up "life science" and other three major awards, a single prize of 1 million US dollars.
(Some "Future Science Awards and Life Sciences Award Winners" Image source: The official website of the Grand Prize Organizing Committee)
"Sweden has the Nobel Prize, Hong Kong has the Shaw Prize, and the Future Science Prize will have a more far-reaching impact as a rising star." Academician Yang Zhenning commented that the Future Science Award is the first award born in China, initiated by the entrepreneur group, which fills the gap of China's non-governmental authoritative science and technology awards.
Pinduoduo founder Huang Zheng is also actively moving towards the forefront of life sciences, and last year announced that together with the founding team, he would jointly donate 2.37% of Pinduoduo's shares and set up the "Stars Charity Fund", the first phase of funding will donate 100 million US dollars to the Zhejiang University Education Foundation in the next 3 to 5 years, dedicated to promoting scientific research in biomedical fields.
The second type is the investment faction, that is, Internet tycoons invest in medical and health-related projects through enterprises, personal funds or family funds.
For example, Wang Xiaochuan, who announced his resignation this time, in addition to the investment part mentioned above, his personal and Sogou have also invested in many well-known scientific and technological medical companies in the field of medical and health, such as Eagle Pupil Airdoc, Spring Rain Doctor, And Xiaolu Chinese Medicine.
On the other hand, Shanda founder Chen Tianqiao and his wife Ms. Luo Qianqian invested 50 million yuan in July this year to promote TCCI (Tianqiao Brain Science Research Institute) to cooperate with the Shanghai Mental Health Center to build an artificial intelligence mental health laboratory.
Ma Yun is through his Yunfeng Fund in the medical and health track layout, has been invested for 7 years. According to the data of Yunfeng Fund, as of April this year, its investment enterprises exceeded 190, of which the medical and health sector has become one of the three major investment sectors of Yunfeng Fund, accounting for 1/3 of the total number of investment projects, including many star enterprises such as Jicui Yaokang, Taimei Medical Technology, Brii (Tengsheng Bo Medicine), Kedi Biological, WuXi Ao test and so on.
The third category is the personal dispatch, that is, the enterprises or individuals at the helm of the Internet giants personally develop medical and health-related businesses.
For example, last year, Zhang Yiming's ByteDance stepped into the field of medicine and big health, and established the big health business unit "Aurora", the unified brand name of the department is "Xiaohe Health", which is responsible for Wu Haifeng, former vice president of Baidu. At present, ByteDance has formed a layout of "online and offline dual channels, services and research and development at the same time" in the field of medical and health care.
(Byte "Xiaohe" APP business structure arterial network mapping)
In addition to creating Baidu Health, Robin Li also personally initiated the establishment of the life science platform company "Baitu Shengke" in September last year, which aims to build unique target mining and drug design capabilities through the combination of AI technology and cutting-edge biotechnology, so as to develop innovative drugs.
In summary, the Internet giants have paid attention to life sciences for a long time and have been deepened. However, judging from the current progress, there are still three major challenges.
The first challenge is that the Internet medical field where the big guys are generally gathered, and the business model is not yet mature. Looking at the layout of Internet giants and their enterprises, most of them are still concentrated in the Internet medical track. The reason is that as an Internet giant, there is traffic and Internet talents, so the extension in this field has a natural advantage.
However, it is unavoidable that the business model of other services in the Internet medical industry is not yet mature except for selling drugs. The homogenization of business such as online registration, triage, medical navigation, and mobile terminal inquiry test forms is fiercely competitive, and the market education of telemedicine, online diagnosis, and online interaction between doctors and patients will take time. Therefore, for the Internet giants, it is also necessary to make "hard work" in improving the efficiency and quality of medical services, bring more value increments to the medical industry, and boost the industry to bring more possibilities in business models.
The second challenge is to have sufficient judgment and cognition in the frontier areas of medical and health care. Entering and investing in the life science field requires a clearer understanding of technology, industry, etc., and needs to pay attention to the transformation of front-end scientific research results in order to catch the trend. In addition, the medical and health industry cycle is relatively long, and there are more resources allocated in the industrial chain, which requires that the entrants have sufficient precipitation and accumulation. Therefore, industry cognition will become a barrier that Internet giants need to overcome.
The third challenge is that the logic of the medical industry is fundamentally different from the logic of the Internet industry. Internet giants are accustomed to "rapid iteration" and "scale effect" and other Internet industry play, but the medical industry is a "slow industry", so it needs to be realized that despite having massive scientific and technological talents, sufficient capital, huge traffic, and even strong channels and other resources, Internet giants can make great strides in the initial cutting into the medical segment, but the facts have proved to be weak when reaching the deep water area of the industry.
For example, Haven, a health insurance company jointly established by Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, assumed the role of customer channel and payer in Amazon's entire medical system, and became famous in the early days of its establishment, but due to its lack of deep understanding of the industry and unclear business goals, the poorly run Haven was finally closed by the end of February this year. Also experiencing a major retreat this year is IBM, which at the beginning of the year got rid of Watson Health, a ten-year-old medical AI star project.
However, it should be noted that the Internet giants have penetrated into the field of life sciences and are also integrating the "genes" of digital technology into the medical and health industry, thus bringing more possibilities to the entire industry.
For example, in the field of new drug research and development, there are difficulties such as high risks, high complexity, and long time. According to the British journal Nature, the cost of developing a new drug is about $2.6 billion, taking about 10 years and less than one in ten success rates.
Enterprises represented by AI are working hard to solve this problem. For example, Robin Li initiated the Batu Shengke through advanced computing and biotechnology, efficiently extract knowledge from multiple sets of student data, high-throughput verification experiments, and drug development experience, draw a map on disease targets and drug design, and change drug discovery from "finding a needle in a haystack" to "according to Tu Suoji", thereby improving the drug research and development efficiency of itself and its partners, and ultimately wanting to achieve the research and development of Global First-in-class original drugs.
(Baitu Biotech's drug pipeline under development Picture source: the company's official website)
Although this road still needs to be tested by time, the entry of the big guys has undoubtedly provided a boost for the transformation and upgrading of the medical and health industry.
<h2>How will the healthcare industry be different in the next decade? </h2>
Standing at the critical time node of industrial change triggered by the new wave of technological revolution, up to the country, down to enterprises or individuals, there are opportunities to take advantage of the trend, walk into the wind, and usher in another opportunity for non-linear growth.
However, it should be noted that this industrial transformation is different from the time of the vigorous development of the Internet, and it is more pointed to the original innovation of technology. You know, innovation is not a "low-hanging fruit" and is difficult to pick, so it requires a lot of talent, funding and resources.
From the national level, innovation has been placed in the core position of China's modernization construction, relevant data show that China's basic research funds accounted for about 5% of the total investment in research and development all year round, soaring by 22.5% in 2019, breaking through 6% for the first time, 8% in 2020, and 15% target in 2025. At that time, China's total investment in research and development will also exceed that of the United States. It is not difficult to find that China attaches more and more importance to basic research.
From the perspective of industrial development, policies and capital are paying more and more attention to and attaching importance to life sciences, which makes segments related to innovative drugs and innovative medical devices more and more popular. For example, cutting-edge subdivisions such as brain science, neurointervention, artificial heart and lung, and conjugated drugs have frequently obtained financing in recent years, and behind them have gathered top investment institutions such as Hillhouse, Sequoia, SoftBank, Matrix Partners China, and China Renaissance Capital.
Therefore, it is conceivable that in the next decade, the venture capital boom in the field of medical health will continue, and it will also attract more Internet giants to invest, or even personally enter the game, which is bound to boost the entire industry to usher in greater development.