Despite the industry’s poor reputation, demand for such services in China is growing rapidly.

The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, a global body formed of plastic surgeons around the world, said China was the third largest international market for the industry after the United States and South Korea. Last year China’s plastic surgery industry, which now has more than 7.4 million clients, was worth 510 billion yuan (HK$645 billion).

Such figures caught the attention of Liu, a Beijing-born start-up entrepreneur, who sensed the potential of huge business opportunities in the sector.

He looked closely at the industry and found that the most common way that mainland clinics and beauty salons attracted customers was to pay huge advertising fees to online search engines, such as like Baidu.com, to keep their website links in the top positions of people’s search results.

Yet to do this on the internet cost a hospital or clinic an average of 7,000 yuan (HK$9,000) per each new client, who typically spent about 10,000 yuan on services, Liu said. After wages and other costs were deducted, the profit margin for providers was slim, he said.

“This led me to think up the idea of creating a faster, more cost-efficient online channel to link clients directly with hospitals,” he said.

After he graduated from university in 2004, Liu worked as a newspaper journalist for three years before his interest in the internet led him to join an online fashion magazine.

“The most important lesson I learned is that you must have a clear profit pattern,” Liu said.

“The market for traditional medical services is dominated by three major players – public hospitals, the government and pharmaceutical companies. There was no strong demand for internet services like ours.”

However, the situation in non-traditional medical fields is different.

In 2011, Liu joined a local mobile medical platform, where he discovered that there were an increasing number of people interested in using plastic surgery and beauty services.

These people are often richer, younger and less price-sensitive, yet many of them have little knowledge about what services will be suitable for them and where they can find reliable doctors.

So in 2013, Liu set up his own team and launched the mobile phone application Gengmei, which was previously known as perfect clinic.

The app enables users to post photographs, share their experiences and communicate directly with doctors.

It also provides access to detailed information about different plastic surgery and beauty treatment services, from the price of surgery to the various risks and the time that the treatment will last.

At the end of April, the platform had attracted 5 million registered users, while more than 3,000 doctors now provide consulting services on the platform. Liu said he hoped Gengmei would have 20 million users by the end of December.

“The most active members on our online community are women aged from 20 and 25. They have a much more open attitude about using plastic surgery services than older women,” Liu said.

Some younger users, for example, would post their own photographs on the online community – without hiding their identities – that were taken before and after undergoing plastic surgery, he said. However, older people would not be so open about letting other people know what surgery had been carried out on their face and body.

“The generation of people born in the 1990s grew up at a time when interest in Japanese and South Korean pop cultures was prevalent on the mainland. They have heard so much about how their idols have used artificial methods to make themselves more attractive,” Liu said.

“Knowledge and interest in plastic surgery and beauty treatments have become part of mainlanders’ normal lives, They don’t even bother to ask for permission from their parents before paying for it to be done.”

Liu said some of his colleagues had persuaded him to try out some of the different beauty products offered by Gengmei.

In February he had Botox injections in his face – at a cost of more than 3,000 yuan – to help make him look thinner in the face.

This month he also began a course of laser treatment to help cure acne, costing between 5,000 yuan and 10,000 yuan, which will require him having follow-up treatment every month or two.

Since last October, when Gengmei started to promote plastic surgery and beauty service packages on its platform, the number of clients signing up to such treatment has been growing sharply.

In April its clients used Gengmei to buy treatments worth more than 50 million yuan. The company estimates that its cost for finding each new customers is less than 10 yuan.

Such demand and rapid growth has helped Gengmei to secure two rounds of new fundraising, although Liu refused to give further details.

He said in the future he planned to extend his business plan into other markets such as cosmetic dentistry.

“We think plastic surgery and beauty services will become more like a fashion product in China in future,” Liu said. “People will start to visit plastic surgery clinics and beauty salons more frequently, especially to have services that do not need them to go under the knife.

“In future consumers will have plenty of choices in services, with prices ranging from the hundreds to tens of thousands of yuan – which is just like shopping in H&M or Armani stores.”