Investments pore into China’s Education industry as Sequoia Capital China backs Math Planet
According to Jingmeiti, Math Planet (迈思星球), an educational company focused on teaching mathematics to children recently announced the acquisition of millions of dollars in A round of financing, led by Sequoia China (红杉资本中国) and 华兴Alpha as the financial adviser of the funding. It is reported that this round of financing is mainly used for marketing and further expansion of the curriculum research and development team.
Math Planet is a contextualized interactive teaching system based on constructivist design for the enlightenment of preschool children's mathematical thinking. It contains the complete OMO teaching curriculum system and teaching resources, as well as the corresponding service system and software and hardware integrated solutions.
At present, the company has developed more than 400 class hours, more than 2,000 contents and more than 6,000 sets of virtual teaching aids. The content is mainly for small and medium-sized classes and extends to the first grade of primary school.
Situational teaching and intelligent guidance are two of the main characteristics of Math Planet. At present, the company has more than 100,000 registered users on its APP and on WeChat. The monthly retention rate of paying users is 94%, and the retention rate for the last six months has been 75%.
In addition, Math Planet will also rely on the back-end data statistics and analysis system to regularly send children's personalized reports to the parents.
It seems as if children’s Math tutoring companies are catching the eyes of investors. Just recently another Mathematics teaching company Onion Math (洋葱数学) announced its Series D funding of CNY 300 million (USD 45 million) in Feb. The investment was led by Primavera Capital Group and followed by Kunlun Tech, taking the total investment value to approximately CNY 600 million (USD 90 million).
Another online children's mathematical thinking training platform Huohua announced last month that the company had finished USD 40 million in Series C funding with Northern Light Venture Capital and Longfor leading the investment.
CEO of Huohua, Luo JIAN believes "The change (in how Chinese parents perceive mathematics) has projected a great market that in China is now still at a very early age."
One of the most important goals for mathematics education has been mathematical thinking. Its role in school mathematics has recently been explicitly identified as one of “Four Basics” in the latest national curriculum standard for compulsory education, which is seen as one of the prominent features of Chinese mathematics education.