Kindstar's Lab Work in China Carries Challenges

Wuhan Kindstar Diagnostics does lab work for more than 2,000 hospitals in 320 cities across China, charging $50 to $300 per test. Last year, the startup added 700 new hospitals as clients, and it expects to keep growing fast as more Chinese enter the middle class and can afford tests to diagnose cancers and other diseases that in the past often went undetected and untreated. “It’s a unique opportunity,” says Chief Executive Officer Shiang Huang.

Soon after Huang launched his startup in 2003, though, he realized that an understanding of logistics would be just as important as medical skills. China doesn’t have a good answer to FedEx or DHL, so a small-but-fast-growing operation such as Huang’s needed workers to shuttle samples from hospitals to the company’s lab in Wuhan via buses, planes, and trains. Today an army of couriers makes up half of Kindstar’s 1,000 employees, picking up 25,000 blood, urine, and tissue samples a day. “We never worry about there being enough demand” for lab tests, says Huang. “We only worry about how we get the samples out.”