51Talk is being expected

51Talk is now one of the largest online English-language training schools in the country, as a one-on-one online English training, 51Talk has been a low price route, because the teacher mainly from the Philippines, the course price is 1/5 of the offline training institutions.

The two-year focus on one-on-one online English training seems to have recently developed a mixed-comedy situation. 51Talk CEO Huang Jiajia confirmed to 36 Krypton, in recent weeks, they have completed a 12 million dollar round of financing, in which Lei's Shun venture fund is the current round of investors, and the end of last year, a round of investment DCM also participated in the current round of financing.

The 51Talk, established in July 2011, is now one of the largest online English-language training schools in the country, and as a one-to-one online English training course, 51Talk has been a low price route, because the teacher mainly from the Philippines, so its course price is almost 1/5 of the offline training institutions. At the end of 2011, 51Talk had received the angel investment of the Trust Fund, and at the end of last year received a millions of dollar a round of DCM financing. And now, 51Talk is expected to become "English training field of millet mobile phone." Huang Jiajia said that they are in harmony with the idea that the experience of good English learning can also be cost-effective, inexpensive, will not say tens of thousands of to pay to learn; Different from the traditional online education and training institutions, 51Talk hope to be able to provide all the people a and foreign teaching good English opportunities. Shun for the fund in the 51Talk has been in school for half a year.

We all know that the recent online education pivot quite a lot, plus the foreign teacher one-on-one online English training to look pretty Red sea, many people are discussing the possibility of vertical field development. In the eyes of Huang Jiajia, although they have new entrants every month, it is difficult to see differentiated products. In this business, which is essentially an education, the combination of the input of education itself, the service of the product and the ability to operate determines the extent to which the entrepreneurial project can be developed.

Huang Jiajia told me that A round of financing so far, in addition to their users, the revenue has made great progress, but also spent more than a year to do the systematization of educational products, research and development of 51Talk classic English textbooks, divided into 16 levels to provide users with teaching materials, systematic learning, very few online foreign teaching English training has such input.

And in the operation they "teacher also as a user to see", in addition to have their own system to match more than 1000 foreign teachers, there are artificial coordination. Now 51Talk at home and abroad a total of more than 200 operations team.

After this round of financing, 51Talk intends to continue to do something on service operations and products. EF, Wall Street English after-sales service is often criticized for not enough, so they do online education must improve the quality of service. And they will be spending some of their money on their own communication tools that they didn't do in the first two rounds of investment. Before that, 51Talk was still using Skype or QQ. In addition, they plan to expand the team size and launch the brand.

Huang Jiajia said he has always been optimistic about the foreign teacher one-on-one online English training field. Although a lot of people talk about online education always argue that experience is always inferior to the offline, but in the oral training of online education can do a better experience. For their products, pure foreign education resources, one-on-one learning, and convenient and inexpensive conditions are difficult to do online. Traditional online English training is often "a pair of six" or "a pair of eight", or even two teachers to teach thousands of students. 51Talk Current user structure is half in the big city, half in the three or four-line city. For users in the three or four-line city, the online approach has given them better resources.

For those who are not bullish on the market, "the most convincing thing is to let people experience our products." "At least now, from the 51Talk revenue and growth rate, it is better in online education, which in itself shows that the market is popular with users," says Huang Jiajia.