May 5 (NBD) -- So-Young International Inc. (Nasdaq: SY), one of the largest Chinese online platform providing medical aesthetic services, rang the Nasdaq bell on Thursday, becoming the first Internet cosmetic surgery site going public.

National Business Daily noticed that at an issue price of 13.8 U.S. dollars, the company sold 13 million American Depositary Shares raising around 179.4 million U.S. dollars.

MAUs tripled in 3 years

Launched in 2013, the platform has established a community where users can seek information about plastic surgery and advice from doctors and medical institutions.

Users can also share their experience and knowledge of cosmetic surgery by posting texts, photos and videos and watch explanatory videos and live-streaming contents featuring clinics and doctors.

The site has forged collaboration with 5,600 medical service providers and it is offering services in cosmetic surgery, physical examination, gynecology, vaccine, postpartum care and other fields.

Photo/Shetuwang

According to the prospectus, its monthly active users (MAUs) have tripled in the past three years, hitting 1.4 million last year, with the number of purchasing users soaring by 105.3 percent from 2017 to 313,000 in 2018.

Besides, So-Young generated net income of 8.01 million U.S. dollars, and facilitated medical aesthetic treatment transactions in the aggregate value of 2.1 billion yuan (312.1 million U.S. dollars) in 2018, representing 33.1 percent of total amounts paid for medical aesthetic treatment booked online in the year.

As the top brand in the online medical aesthetic sector, the platform is favored by investors. It has raised a total of about 150 million U.S. dollars through the past six financing rounds before initial public offering.

The listing of So-Young is forecasted to activate the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain and promote the development of equipment and pharmaceutical companies and service institutions, Guo Ruyi, managing partner of TH Capital, pointed out.

Rivalry intensifies in fast-expanding market

Data from business consulting firm Frost & Sullivan shows the total revenue of China's online medical aesthetic service platform surged to 1.3 billion yuan last year from 64.5 million yuan in 2014, and the figure is estimated to hit 12.6 billion yuan by 2023 with a CAGR of 58.2 percent from 2018.

In the fast growing domain, So-Young is not the only player jostling for a slice of the market.

E-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group first made foray into the field in 2016 when Tmall's online medical unit was merged with Ali Health. In 2018, Ali Health initiated a strategic partnership with pharmaceutical company Allergan to further expand presence in the sector.

Online lifestyle service app Meituan Dianping, So-Young's another major rival, revealed its future plan for deployment in the field at a medical aesthetics summit held in January this year.

"In the upstream of the industrial chain, we will team up with brands and institutions including Restylane, Bloomage Biotechnology and Allergan and build a third party platform for those firms," said Li Xiaohui, head of Meituan Dianping's medical aesthetics business.

Apart from challenges from competitors, So-Young is facing high marketing expenses due to consumers' distrust of the immature industry.

A white paper on China's cosmetics surgery sector disclosed that illegal practitioners in the market numbered over 150,000, compared to 17,000 registered professionals, which created immense difficulty for consumers to tell qualified institutions and drugs from off-grade ones.

To build positive brand image and gain trust from consumers, So-Young spent 306 million yuan in marketing activities in 2018, account for 49.6 percent of its revenue.

But the company maintains optimistic about the entire sector. "It takes time for the industry to get mature. We choose to grow with the industry and do more basic work to establish foundation of the industry," Jin Xing, founder of the platform, ever noted.

In Jin's expectation, So-Young will form more connections with doctors, consultants and pharmaceutical manufacturers, and grow into the largest industrial Internet site in the field that can empower all enterprises along the industrial chain.

Email: lansuying@nbd.com.cn