H2U raises US$8M to power new health ecosystem (2022-01-11)
2022-01-11
H2U Corporation, the leading digital health platform provider and top workplace health brand, is ringing in the New Year by announcing the close of a US$8 million round of funding at the end of 2021, led by Hon Hai Precision founder and major H2U shareholder Terry Gou, and Foxconn Technology. Also joining forces are strategic investors ADATA Technology, TOPCO Scientific, UDN.com, WeLeader Bio, Fight International, and Wondercise. The alliance will play to the strengths of each partner to create an innovative, subscription-based workplace health ecosystem.
Focusing on holistic health, sports, and healthy diets, H2U’s digital health platform analyzes first-party health data and helps tens of thousands of companies in Taiwan by designing comprehensive workplace health benefits for their employees, including health management, sports scheduling, health promotional events in the workplace, group exercise classes, healthy fresh food, and sports science consultations.
Precision health and digital medicine are two leading trends in the development of Taiwan’s biotech industry. According to a joint report issued by the Institute for Biotechnology and Medicine Industry (IBMI) and PwC, “data-oriented digital technology platforms and new ecosystems formed by crossindustry integration will be critical to the development of digital health”.
As the top digital health platform in Taiwan, H2U has a 70% share in the health examination data market with its Examine Platform and helps hundreds of corporate clients with its H2U eXpert services.
“Through the Everyday Health and Biji websites it operates, H2U receives inflows of data every minute from tens of thousands of users, including physiological check-up data, exercise data, browsing data, and purchasing behavior data”, said the CEO of H2U, Saxon Chen.
“By using H2U’s marketing technology and artificial intelligence engine to analyze, learn from, and optimize these legally authorized and protected zero-party and first-party data, we can work with the leading partners in the fields of health and sports to provide personalized health services and products to company employees and their families, and these subscription-based services can be repeated,” said Chen.
“The major reason we received support from Mr. Gou and the other investors is that our business model aims to realize the vision of ‘digital health’ by creating a workplace health ecosystem,” he added.
In addition to support from strategic partners, H2U boasts the resources and networks brought by a team of prominent advisors. Led by Academician Yang Pan-Chyr of Academia Sinica, the team includes industry heavyweights such as former Merck Group Taiwan managing director Dick Hsieh, PwC Taiwan honorary deputy chairperson Audrey Tseng, and blockchain expert and former legislator Hsu Yu-jen. The team offers valuable guidance in the development of precision medicine, biomedicine, and blockchain applications.
In the New Year, H2U will continue to help people stay healthy by providing services they believe in and built on data capabilities. Working with top companies including Merck Taiwan, Roche Diagnostics Taiwan, ADATA Technology, TOPCO Scientific, and UDN.com, H2U is set to help these companies launch the “Family Friendly Award” initiative for the workplace, which will enhance employee welfare and talent retention and meet ESG and CSR goals.
Apart from the Taiwanese market, H2U is also working to tap into the international market. In 2022, the company will enter the Asian digital health market and bring in international strategic investors from Japan and Silicon Valley in the hope of growing into a leading digital health unicorn. The objective is to launch an overseas IPO in two years.
About H2U
Founded in 2013, H2U is a workplace health service platform that has served over a million company employees. In 2019, H2U was named one of the top 50 digital healthcare companies by the International Forum on Advancements in Healthcare (IFAH). The H2U platform provides legally compliant easy access for occupational medicine practitioners and effective workplace health management services. It integrates health education, health check-ups, sports and health promotion, e-commerce, and Covid-19 management protocols to offer companies the most diverse and optimized employee health benefit programs to help them build health assets and influence.
H2U’s Examine Platform has a 70% share in the health check-up data platform market and serves 1.2 million people a year, while H2U eXpert serves more than 500 companies. H2U also has two wholly owned subsidiaries: Everyday Health and Biji. Everyday Health has the highest traffic of all health media, clocking over a million views per day and boasting a million loyal users who closely follow health-related news and products. It has accumulated a million entries of zero-party and first-party data. Biji is the biggest online sports community that focuses on competitive running and hiking. It also organizes H2U is now the largest digital health service platform in Taiwan. The number of members providing zero-party and firstparty health and sports data accounts for 30% of the working-age population in the country. This means one in three of the 20–65 age group is a member of H2U or one of its affiliated companies.
About H2U’s ESG sustainable low-carbon initiative and green marathon project
The tenth Tianzhong Marathon, which just concluded at the end of 2021, shifted online for the first time in response to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Over 7,000 runners clocked a total of 969,708 km, more than the distance of a round trip from Tianzhong, Changhua, to the Moon. As part of the efforts to make the event green, H2U and partners Fubon Financial Holding, Taisun Enterprise, and San-Hao Rice planted 5,511 trees across Taiwan. In 2022, H2U is scheduled to coorganize the Lobsang Run charity event in Taoyuan, Taichung, and Kaohsiung, which will incorporate the concept of lowcarbon emissions and environmental protection, and encourage companies and the general public to run for health and sustainability.
