Acadsoc has raised a total of more than USD 60 million. This latest financing will be used for AI to improve the quality of teachers and the foreign teachers management system
Acadsoc, an advanced online education platform for languages, academic subjects as well as skills announced that it has completed nearly CNY 100 C2 round of financing, led by the old shareholder GF Xinde Investment. This is the second investment the company has raised in 2019. Earlier this year in February Acadsoc raised more than CNY 100 million with IDG and Shenzhen Capital Group as the lead investors.
The company will use this financing to improve the quality of teachers, optimize the foreign teacher management system and recruitment system, and continue to increase the investment in AI technology.
In the foreign teacher recruitment system, Acadsoc will continue to increase the recruitment of full-time foreign teachers, while increasing the number of foreign teachers, adhere to the "strict screening and strict selection", to achieve "quantity and quality"; for the recruitment of foreign teachers, in simple words, the company will also fully implement the training and assessment mechanism for foreign teachers, and improve the quality of foreign teachers.
In the management system of foreign teachers, Acadsoc will use AI, big data and other technologies to optimize, achieve rapid screening, optimize the matching efficiency of foreign teachers and students.
The company itself claims that it has more than 10,000 tutors from all over the world helping students to create an effective learning style and matches the needs of individuals to suitable tutors.
As the second-largest online education market after K12, language training has become less word-intensive, with players crowded on all tracks, from Children's English to Professional English.
WANG Zhibin founder and CEO of Acadsoc mentioned that the popularity of the Internet is transforming the traditional form of various industries. Because of science and technology, the development of future education will inevitably develop towards intelligence and individuality, although the current penetration rate of personalized training is only 4%. However, as online foreign teachers develop towards “popularization”, “specialization” and “internationalization”, this market will gradually expand.”
In his view, from the introduction of the National Geographic Learning Textbook to the release of the Acadsoc Foreign Teacher BOX, to the strategic layout of the International Learning Center, Acadsoc has been exploring the most suitable foreign language learning model for Chinese children. “The biggest problem facing children in learning English is the lack of effective driving force, so we decided to cut in from the toughest point of developing English learning habits.”
In response to future developments, Acadsoc said that in 2019, it will continue to increase the promotion of foreign teachers' BOX, plan to settle in more cities, and gradually lay out to third- and fourth-tier cities to build offline stores where students can go and learn English from foreign teachers online. With a slogan of, "Let every Chinese child have a foreign teacher."
Earlier, Akaso CEO Wang Zhibin said in an interview with duozhi.com that Acadsoc did not deliberately seek to consumer users at the top of the pyramid. Starting from social needs, we will take the business model of “low-priced and high-quality” education products. Acadsoc’s course price is CNY 13-15 for a 25 minutes class per day. Acadsoc follows the business model of fast fashion brand ZARA and wants to be the ZARA of online education.
It seems as if the company has said to use this round of investment mostly to improve the teaching quality by investing in AI. AI+education is at a very early stage right now and claiming to use AI to match the students and teachers sounds something from the future. Companies until now have used AI to improve the content but is this the reason behind the rise of almost CNY 100 million?