<\/p>\n
TikTok\u2019s parent company ByteDance is making some pretty heavy bets on the healthcare space as it acquired Amcare, which runs high-end children\u2019s and women\u2019s hospitals across China.<\/p>\n
The buyout cost ByteDance $1.5 billion, according to Bloomberg. A spokesperson for Xiaohe Health, ByteDance\u2019s healthcare business, confirmed the acquisition but declined to comment on the deal size.<\/p>\n
The transaction is turning some heads in the tech industry. For one, China has over the past few years ramped up anti-competition regulations on tech companies and blocked major consolidation deals, including Tencent\u2019s proposal to combine the country\u2019s top two livestreaming platforms for gamers.<\/p>\n
Amcare\u2019s expertise also seems tangential to ByteDance\u2019s main business of a content machine that churns out snappy, addictive videos. It\u2019s not uncommon, however, to see internet giants in both China and the U.S. dabbling in the healthcare sphere as part of their diversification strategy when they\u2019ve got the capital and user base to tap. Tencent has tried opening brick-and-mortar clinics. Alibaba and JD.com run online pharmacies.<\/p>\n
The short video giant probably won\u2019t take over Amcare\u2019s management but at best hook up its healthcare portfolio with the newly-acquired company, which runs private maternity wards that are popular among China\u2019s well-to-do and elites.<\/p>\n
ByteDance\u2019s foray into healthcare, at least on public record, started in 2020 when it bought a company that provided health information to the masses. ByteDance\u2019s health business later came to be known as Xiaohe Health and its interest in the space is far-reaching, with a growing investment portfolio that includes a company that specializes in drug discovery and one that conducts DNA synthesis.<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen how ByteDance finds synergies between its\u00a0 entertainment empire and budding healthcare and biotech arm. Search engine giant Baidu showed the risk of coalescing the greedy advertising business and the health business which should in principle prioritize people\u2019s lives over financial interest. The firm sparked national outrage in 2016 when it emerged that a student who died of cancer had borrowed money to finance an unsuccessful treatment that he found advertised on Baidu\u2019s search engine.<\/p>\n
ByteDance is adept at funneling users from one established platform to a young one to help the latter grow. Its Chinese short video app Douyin, which hit 600 million daily active users in 2020, could easily insert a few promotional clips for its healthcare services. It\u2019s a level of power that needs to be exercised with caution and responsibility.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TikTok\u2019s parent company ByteDance is making some pretty heavy bets on the healthcare space as it acquired Amcare, which runs high-end children\u2019s and women\u2019s hospitals across China. The buyout cost ByteDance $1.5 billion, according to Bloomberg. A spokesperson for Xiaohe Health, ByteDance\u2019s healthcare business, confirmed the acquisition but declined to comment on the deal size. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1171766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1171764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1171764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1171764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1171764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1171764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}