Welcome to this issue of Ai Ask Characters!
At the end of 2020, the news that Waterdrop Company will go public in the United States has caused a sensation on the Internet.
While the storm has not subsided, on January 5, 2021, a communication retraction letter circulating on social media made Waterdrop once again the focus of public attention. The retraction letter pointed out that an article entitled "Water Drop Chip, Turning "Public Welfare" into "Business", With Annual Income of More Than 18 Billion Yuan" was accused of "untrue content" and asked to delete the draft.
In fact, "Water Drop Company" and "Water Drop Chip" are indeed not directly equated.
Founded in 2016, the company is founded by Shen Peng, co-founder of Meituan Takeaway, whose business includes water drop insurance, water drop mutual aid and water drop chip, etc., with more than 300 million paid users; water drop chip business was launched in 2016, which is currently a free domestic social fundraising platform for serious illness, and is also the pioneer of the domestic network serious illness fundraising 0 handling fee.
It is worth noting that in this retraction letter, Waterdrop Company clearly stated that it is "not a charitable public welfare organization", so the accusation of "in the name of public welfare" does not apply to itself.
In 1987, Shen Peng, the founder of Waterdrop Chip, was born in the family hospital of Chinese Min Insurance Company. Shen Peng's father joined Chinese Insurance in 1985 and continued to work in the insurance industry until retirement.
(Shen Peng, founder of Waterdrop Chip)
In 2006, Shen Peng was admitted to the Central University of Finance and Economics. When he graduated in 2010, Shen Peng passed the interview and entered a start-up company, the name of this startup, called Meituan. At that time, Meituan was not today's "takeaway brother", and there were only 9 people in the whole company. Shen Peng entered the Meituan and became the No. 10 employee with a basic salary of 1500 yuan.
From ordinary sales, regional managers, to product managers of Meituan.com, and then to business directors of Meituan, Shen Peng is full of life.
In March 2016, 29-year-old Shen Peng sent an email to the Meituan internal mailbox group "Farewell to the Meituan, re-start a business, a thousand words, only thanks". Subsequently, shen peng's waterdrop company received 50 million yuan of angel investment from Tencent, Meituan Dianping, idg capital, Gaorong capital, Zhen Fund, etc.
On May 9, 2016, Waterdrop Mutual Aid was launched. Members join the community according to the established rules, the membership fee is 9 yuan, if the member is unfortunate to fall ill or encounter an accident, he can receive a health mutual aid fund worth up to 300,000 yuan in accordance with the rule of "one person is sick and everyone is equally shared". 9 yuan for 300,000 yuan, so comparable to the public welfare of the corporate behavior so that droplet mutual aid in the 100 days after the launch, quickly get 1 million paying users.
In July 2016, Shen Peng started the social fundraising business of personal serious illness help, and Waterdrop Chip came into being. As early as before, "Easy Fundraising" has been established for nearly 2 years and completed a $20 million B+ round of financing, and the platform will charge about 2% of the handling fee to the fundraising patients. In order to "grab food from the tiger's mouth", Shen Peng not only removed the "entry fee threshold of 9 yuan" of the original generation of water drop mutual aid, but also canceled all handling fees and created a "network serious illness fundraising 0 handling fee model".
Shen Peng said: "76% of the fundraising users are from third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities, 72% of donation users are from third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities, and 77% of interactive users are also from third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities. We found that the user stickiness and loyalty of third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities are much higher than those in first- and second-tier cities, and they are more willing to spread it for us, which is why our low cost of customer acquisition is low. ”
Of the 16,000 troops raised by the water drops, most of them were on the three, four, and fifth lines. Since 2019, some media have begun to list water drop chips, along with Pinduoduo, Kuaishou and Qutoutiao as the "four kings of the sinking market". Shen Peng himself is very satisfied with this positioning.
With the title of "King of the Sinking Market", with the mission of "protecting hundreds of millions of families" and the vision of "allowing the majority of China and family diseases to be treated", Shui Di Chip quickly found the hospital with the highest concentration of seriously ill patients, signed strategic cooperation, and built stations in the surrounding areas, and the company sent staff to directly guide patients to raise funds.
According to the data of the Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of 2020, the per capita disposable income of Chinese residents was 15666 yuan, and the per capita consumption expenditure was 9718 yuan; of which the per capita disposable income of urban residents in China was 21655 yuan, and the per capita disposable income of rural residents was 8069 yuan.
The average cost of treatment of serious diseases in China, the data is frightening:
Cancer: 120,000-500,000;
Major organ transplants: 200,000-500,000;
Aplastic anemia: 150,000-400,000;
Sequelae of stroke: 100,000-400,000;
Chronic renal failure: 100,000-300,000;
Heart valve surgery: 100,000-250,000.
For a family with an average income, a serious illness may even mean "the family is broken". It is precisely for this reason that at all costs of manpower and material resources to help patients raise money for treatment, it is like "living bodhisattvas in the world" for the vast sinking group.
(Image from the Internet)
According to the official data released by Waterdrop Chip, since its launch in July 2016, as of the end of December 2020, Waterdrop Chip has successfully raised more than 37 billion yuan of free medical assistance for seriously ill patients with economic difficulties, generating a total of more than 1.1 billion times of love gifts.
But the problem is, after all, no CEO will spend money to hire people to do charity, and the ultimate purpose of business establishment is to make a profit. So, what profit does the waterdrop company with water drop chip as its main business rely on?
Since fundraising users can use the "while raising and taking" function in the fundraising process, the fundraising withdrawal time is completely controlled by the user, according to the platform data, the current proportion of fundraising users successfully withdrawing within 7 days after initiating fundraising has approached 60%.
Waterdrop Chip and Ping An Bank have long reached a cooperation, all the love gifts generated on the platform will directly enter the special management account of the bank body, to achieve special management and special use, this part of the money is isolated from the water drop chip platform's own funds. Banks will provide depository, clearing, and bank-enterprise reconciliation services for funds, assisting the platform to control the security of capital transactions, improve the standardization of platform transactions and settlement, and enhance the credibility of the platform. The waterdrop fundraising platform does not have a capital pool to ensure the safety and transparency of the flow of fundraising funds to the greatest extent.
Platformization, originally, is not about right or wrong, good and evil. It's just that While Shen Peng led the company to make profits, he did a really good job.
In 2017, while Waterdrop won the title of "Top 100 Most Promising Startups in Entrepreneurship", Waterdrop Chip was also listed as "China Charity List Annual Top Ten Charity Projects"; in 2018, Waterdrop Chip was selected as "China Public Welfare Enterprise of the Year" and was jointly launched by the Olive Branch of the Red Cross to launch the first "Blood Raising Season" unpaid blood donation project; in 2020, founder Shen Peng won the 2020 Global Founders Conference· Best New Economy Leaders" list top 50. The portal website of the Ministry of Civil Affairs even praised by name: "Committed to providing professional social fundraising services for non-profit organizations, and providing a convenient channel for 400 million water drop users to do public welfare at will." ”
"Business" turned into "public welfare". However, the tide of praise made it difficult for Shen Peng to ride a tiger, and this public welfare could not be done. In 2017, The insurance platform of Waterdrop Company- Waterdrop Insurance was put online for public testing, relying on the flow of water drops to lay down the world, and Waterdrop Insurance effortlessly gained a foothold in the market. In 2019, Waterdrop Insurance officially changed its name to Waterdrop Insurance Mall.
Anyone who has participated in the Droplet Crowdfunding knows that after the Droplet Fundraiser donation, a page of the Insurance Mall will pop up. Generally after the donation, most of the donors will have associative psychology and begin to worry about whether they will get sick in the future, so the success rate of the water drop insurance mall to sell insurance is much higher than that of ordinary insurance salesmen.
Counting your fingers, to this day, the water drop company has only been established for 5 years. From the initial launch of network mutual aid to serious illness fundraising, and then to the formation of a commercial closed loop in the droplet insurance mall, building a "fundraising + mutual aid + insurance" ecology, providing a new solution for the traditional insurance industry's problems in customer acquisition, the strategic layout of the droplet has undergone several iterations, asking about the strategy, it is 6 words: rural surrounding the city.
In August 2017, it obtained a round of financing of 160 million yuan, which was jointly led by Tencent and Lanchi Venture Capital, and followed by Innovation Factory, Gaorong Capital, idg Capital, Meituan Dianping, Tongcheng Public Welfare Foundation and other institutions. In March 2019, the B round of financing was completed, led by Tencent, followed by Investors such as Gaorong Capital, idg Capital, Lanchi Venture Capital, Innovation Factory, DST Global founder Yuri Milner, and wu Xiaoguang, former CEO of Tencent E-commerce Holding Company, with a total financing amount of nearly 500 million yuan.
In June 2019, Waterdrop announced the completion of a series C financing of more than RMB1 billion, led by Boyu Capital, followed by investment institutions such as Tencent and CICC Capital, and with Taihe Capital as the exclusive financial advisor. On August 20, 2020, Waterdrop once again announced that it had completed a $230 million Series D series of financing, jointly led by Swiss Re Group and Tencent, and followed by old shareholders such as Idg Capital and Light Global Fund.
However, the negative news that has just gained the favor of capital suddenly erupted: "sweeping the building to find helpers", "the pusher took the commission to dislike the patient's illness is not serious enough", "the deyun society disciples are well-off but go to the water drop to raise funds", "take fake medical records and other fake information to cheat money", "sell insurance in the name of public welfare", "the fundraising of the water drop fund is charged 40%-50% of the handling fee by the platform".
Consuming kindness? Ugly to eat? Suddenly, the "public welfare" that everyone applauded became the "business" that everyone shouted and beat.
In September 2020, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) issued the "Research on the Analysis of Illegal Commercial Insurance Activities and Countermeasure Suggestions", which mentioned: "The online mutual aid platform that has grown barbarically in recent times has the characteristics of commercial insurance in essence, but there is no clear regulatory body and regulatory standards at present, and it is in an embarrassing situation of no supervision." ”
A series of scandals are true and false. On December 5, 2019, CEO Shen Peng was even angrier on Weibo: "If it is not good to manage it, I am willing to hand over the water drop chip to the relevant public welfare organizations!" ”
In fact, the lack of supervision is of course the internal fault of The WaterDrop Company, but whether it is the Droplet Mutual Aid, the Waterdrop Chip or the Waterdrop Insurance Mall, these are only a part of the Waterdrop and belong to the social responsibility sector of the Waterdrop Company. As a commercial company, the commercial sector is inevitably indispensable.
Shen Peng is very frank, in his view, water drops is not a company known for strategy, the outside world's description of water drops - "three-stage rocket", "sinking four heavenly kings", are from the results of backwards, not the original intention of water drops. In 2020, Shen Peng once again stated: "The status quo of water drops is not the endgame, but to become the leading health protection platform in China." ”
According to Shen Peng's thinking, the macro structure of Waterdrop Company is an independent ecology, and its chain is in turn "medical capital supply - personal insurance - great health". This is a joint road of "medical insurance" to build a future-oriented health platform. At present, Waterdrop has contacted roche, Merck, AstraZeneca, Chia Tai Tianqing, Ted Pharmaceutical and other pharmaceutical companies, and has launched a new project called "WaterDrop Good Medicine Payment" internally.
In 2018, a "I am not a medicine god" saw countless people crying, and it was difficult to see a doctor and buy medicine expensively has become the number one enemy of national health. To be sure, what Waterdrop is solving and hoping to solve is a very complex and difficult social problem, and is trying to directly link the protagonist of these problems, the sinking group, to capital. As a young start-up company, it is rare that Waterdrop can build such a business structure and end picture for these social problems, and is willing to work hard for them.
On November 24, 2020, Tencent Holdings is investing an additional approximately $150 million in waterdrop inc., an Internet health insurance company. At the beginning of 2021, relevant sources revealed that Waterdrop is planning to officially go to the United States for IPO in the first quarter of 2021, with a target valuation of $6 billion. As soon as the news came out, public opinion was once again in an uproar.
Embrace sinking or rush to capital? Ai Qian (iask-media.com) believes that the water drop company itself is beyond reproach, it can be said that the water drop is "cloaked in public welfare, the reality of business", but also try to believe that the water drop company is "doing business, for the public good".
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Author: Black-skinned monkey Editor: Jielin Yang Image: Wan Shanhong
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