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See How This Chinese Guy Stop His Studies To Build His Medical Empire!

Zhang is also trying to attract more patients by developing smartphone applications. In April iKang launched a medical-examination app that can recommend personalized test packages to customers based on its pool of client health care data.

Along with Chinese Internet giants Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, iKang is trying to break a logjam that sees many hospital patients queue in the early mornings and often wait hours for a chance to see a doctor. Anger that ensues has contributed to a spate of attacks on physicians.

Zhang’s initial model iKang, as a platform connecting clients with checkup clinics, never worked. China’s undersupply of quality medical services means the centers have no trouble finding customers and didn’t need a middleman.

In 2007 Zhang made his big strategic switch by purchasing health care provider Shanghai Guobin. As iKang showed what it could do with equipment and personnel, investors noticed. In 2013 iKang received $95 million from Goldman Sachs and the Government of Singapore Investment Corp. Now the company looks to bolster that bricks-and-mortar care online. “If we foresee the changes [in mobile health care] more quickly, we could be better prepared for that,” Zhang says. “But the good thing is, no one else has really created a model yet, and we could still have time.”

The founder was born in Jiangyin, a small city on the south bank of the Yangtze River. His parents are teachers. They borrowed money to send him to Concordia College in Minnesota in 1991, after he decided to quit China’s estimable Fudan University.

Zhang found the way to his dream school, Harvard, through hard study and patience (he turned down an offer from the University of Southern California along the way). The subsequent decision to quit Ph.D. studies and work at Sohu was a hard one for his proud parents. But they budged.

“My mom understands me,” he says. “She knows when I decide to do something, I am determined.”

The latest global Internet craze has shown that Zhang’s initial instincts weren’t so far off. But his company would still be a small player if he had stuck to what he had in mind, he says. The bravest thing he did was to go off-line.

Original article source: Forbes

Zhang Ligang is just one of one billion people in China, yet he still stands out as one of the top individuals in the country. Surely we, too, can be just like him!