COLDSKY – Tomorrow Advancing Life, a leading education and technology enterprise in China, and Tiger Global have injected $100 million in Series C fundraising of online English education company DaDaABC, reported 36kr.com.
The language school offers one-to-one online English classes for young learners, four to 16 years old, by cooperating with licensed foreign teachers from the United States and Europe on its web-based platform.
It also claims to use original international textbooks and partners with professional institutes, including Pearson and McGraw-Hill Education.
DaDaABC advocates a fixed-teacher-for-one-student model, saying this can help monitor progress of learning and allow teachers and students to be friends. Each DaDaABC class lasts 30 minutes, while mainstream online language courses are 25 minutes for children in China.
Famous tech blogger Hulianwang Nadianshi (Internet Stuff) also disclosed Tomorrow Advancing Life plans to purchase DaDaABC.
China’s four major English training companies are vipkid (market value $2 billion), vipjr (market value $1.4 billion), DaDaABC (market value approximately $300 million) and the listed 51talk ($250 million), according to caijing.com.cn.
The author’s son has tried vipkid courses twice, each with a different teacher but with the same learning materials. The experience of the teachers seemed to vary, and it was also hard for the teacher to easily build rapport with the child through computer contact alone. However, VR or AR could play a role in immersive education.
