English Teaching Platform Panda ABC Raises CNY 100 million

Author: Qasim Khan May 04, 2019 05:00 PM (GMT+8)

Chinese Online education is on the rise and Panda ABC is one of the many companies to take advantage of that. The company has previusly raised millions of yuan in its Angel round

Celebrations at the headquarters. PHOTO: Panda ABC official website

Recently 36kr was informed that Panda ABC (潘哒) completed CNY 100 million Series A financing in December 2018. The investors included Shunwei Capital, K2VC, Eastern Bell venture capital and Evering capital as the financial advisor. 

PandaABC is an English-language training organization dedicated to providing English speaking, reading and writing education to children aged 4 to 12. The company teaches the students through the introduction of American textbooks, three 30 minutes classes per week, and a qualified foreign or local teacher.

It is worth mentioning that both Panda ABC’s small class and large class initiation have made profits on both lines of business. In 2018, Panda obtained customers mainly by ads. But now, it depends on Aircourse and users recommendation, which is sustainable. In terms of the customer-grabbing cost, which is highly focused by the market, Panda ABC’s cost to gain a unit customer is way much lower than the industry’s average level, which is less than 10% of the unit price. In addition, more than 70% of its customers are introduced by old customers, and almost 75% of its users would renew their service when the class is expired.

In an interview with 36Kr Panda ABC’s founder Lou JIALU, shared his thoughts on “What is effective traffic” and “What good content is.”

He said “In the target population of 50 million 3-12 year olds, there may be more than 40 million potential users in third- and fourth-tier cities.” Most children start learning English from the age of 10 and have missed the best time to learn a new language in this case being English.

On the other hand, compared to the mainstream offline education, online English education can connect children and teachers, students and content more effectively through richer multimedia interactive teaching technology and AI.

With the development of online payment, online teaching technology and content, it is a big trend for the 50 million users to purchase online courses quickly in the next few years.

Panda ABC’s AirCourse implements the 1VN teaching model while arranging front-end pages into 1V4 and providing an approximate 1V4 classroom experience through an interactive system. Currently, there is a “Harvard Foreign Teacher Theme English Course” (CNY 2888 / 365 lessons), and a "STEM- MIT Foreign Language Science Experiment Course” (CNY 599).

For the highly competitive online children's English sector, a large number of mainstream companies offer similar "small courses". For parents who pay a unit price of CNY 10,000 per year, going abroad may be one of their children's future plans, so this course is a good option. 

According to iResearch Consulting Group, the revenue of China’s online education market reached CNY 251.76 billion in 2018 with a year on year growth of 25.7%, which was estimated to keep a growth rate of 16%-24% in the following 3-5 years.