Alibaba promotion helps sperm banks find donors

The company, based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, ran a promotion on its Juhuasuan group buying site from July 15 to 17 on behalf of seven sperm centers.
Men who sign up to donate sperm and complete the procedure will receive subsidies ranging from 3,000 yuan ($483) to 5,000 yuan from the sperm banks.
Within three days, 22,000 men agreed to make a donation, Alibaba said, adding that 69 percent were from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province.
Alibaba, regarded as the place to buy anything online from books to clothes and tractors to smartphones, already sells medicines on its Tmall online marketplace.
Healthcare has become one of the company’s major focuses since it invested in the pharmaceutical data tracking company CITIC 21CN, now known as Alibaba Health Information Technology, last year.
The sperm bank initiative was launched in response to a shortage of donors in many provinces.
Alibaba said it is using the promotion as a test run for the provision of online-to-offline services in the healthcare sector.
Until now, donors have had to bring along paperwork and make a reservation at a brick-and-mortar sperm bank.
Many find it less embarrassing and more convenient to make an online booking via Juhuasuan, according to Alibaba.
Volunteers can simply fill out application forms online and show up at their local sperm bank to undergo tests at any time in the next three months.
Yue Huanxun, head of the sperm bank at West China Hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan province, said it is essential that centers team up with leading online platforms to promote donation.
“The majority of the country’s sperm banks find it difficult to attract suitable donors,” he added.
Yue, whose center participated in the Juhuasuan promotion, said 2,000 donors in the province signed up within 72 hours.
“The number was about the same as we get in an entire year.”
He said that, unlike blood donation, which does not take long, sperm donation usually requires three to four months as donors have to take a series of tests.
“The subsidies we offer are not large enough to attract enough donors to meet the demand from couples with fertility problems,” he said.
China has more than 50 million infertile couples, China News reported in March.
In the same Juhuasuan group buying event, more than 100 people bought paternity test kits online and another 4,060 people purchased sperm motility test kits.
Qiao Yu, an analyst at IT consultancy Analysys International, said the country’s online healthcare market is still in its infancy.
“The continuation of medical reforms combined with the creativity of e-commerce companies is expected to make the market more dynamic and people’s lives more convenient,” Qiao said.