VipKid to expand to 100 countries as investment in China’s online education sector heats up
The country’s largest online education start-up currently has more than 500,000 students and a community of 60,000 teachers, located mostly in North America
VipKid, China’s largest online education start-up, is expanding its course offering and adopting artificial intelligence (AI) tools as part of a plan to deliver services in 100 countries over the next three years, following its US$500-million funding round in June that valued the company at more than US$3 billion.
The company’s expansion initiative, announced at a press conference Beijing on Thursday, followed reports last month that rival start-up Liulishuo planned to raise up to US$300 million in an initial public offering in the United States, with an eye on a US$2 billion valuation.
VipKid, founded in 2013, provides over the internet one-on-one English-language instruction, aligned with North American elementary school curriculum, and taught by about 60,000 qualified teachers mostly from the United States and Canada to children in China between the ages of five to 12.
In contrast, Shanghai-based Liulishuo developed what it claims as the world’s most advanced AI English-teaching system that is made available through a smartphone app, which now has more than 70 million users in China and 175 countries around the world.
The expansion efforts of VipKid and Liulishuo reflect how online education has become one of the hottest sectors in China’s technology industry, with online English-language tutoring forecast to grow into an US$8 billion market by next year, according to market analysis firm iResearch.
