Healthcare Author：Yang Shang Sep 14, 2019 12:47 AM (GMT+8)

With gross revenue growing almost fourfold of drug e-commerce business last year, AliHealth has found a place among the healthcare industry leaders.

AliHealth arm has cooperated with over 3,000 health-related brands. Image credits to Unsplash.

AliHealth Pharmacy, Alihealth-run online drug platform, announced that the business upgraded to the next generation, aiming at making standards for the whole industry, including supply chain, process management, selling and after-sale service.

The upgraded B2C medical e-commerce platform involved in four new functions: drug description, professional health video program, health knowledge and free consulting. Today, over 2,000 licensed pharmacists serve on the platform, while this number was only about 200 three years ago, according to the company. 

The multiple healthcare solution ecosystem has been built up with more than 3,000 health-related brands from 22 countries collaborating with the AliHealth arm, such as CTO medicine, dietary products, medical equipment&service, contact lens, makeups, baby products and so on. In 20 China’s cities, AliHealth provides the two-day delivery service for users benefited from Alibaba’s logistics service, said Liu Henghao, general manager of AliHealth Pharmacy.

Besides, AliHealth Pharmacy debuted an intelligent healthcare manager “Luxiaojia” based on Alibaba’s smart speaker “TmallGenie”. Supported by a healthcare knowledge graph, the gadget is capable to recognize around 40,000 drugs and provide advise for around 2,000 types of disease.

According to AliHealth’s financial report, the Alibaba’s medical subsidiary achieved CNY 5.096 billion (USD 720.2 million) revenue in 2018 (fiscal year) and CNY 1.331 billion (USD 188.1 million) profit, with a magnificent growth rate of 108.6% and 103.9% year on year respectively.

Thanks to the 296.8% year-on-year growth of drug e-commerce business – the B2C business AliHealth Pharmacy is included in, the company started to be on the upswing after nine years since its establishment.

Liu Henghao disclosed that the three-year-old pharmacy marketplace will pave the way for providing more comprehensive healthcare services for clients and consumers by combining with internet hospitals founded by its parent company.

"It can be expected that the biggest drugstore brand will be online," Shen Difan said, the chief executive officer of AliHealth.