Apes exam bank announced the completion of 15 million US dollars of round C financing

In July 2014, the ape test bank announced the completion of C $ 15 million round of financing. After the financing is completed, the ape question bank valuation reached 125 million US dollars. At this point, the company has just been established for two years.

In the past year, online education programs such as Happy Studies and Ladder Network went on-line and entered the field of exams. Traditional undergraduates such as Education and Education also launched mobile learning products to try their best to find an online market. Changes in the external situation, the ape exam also products and models, and constantly explore and adjust.

From learning communities to the exam products, from the professional exam products to the K12 (from kindergarten to the third year) exam products, from the charging mode to the free mode, two years, the ape question bank in the adjustment to explore the online education survival.

"We should be the third in an online education company that has raised money this year," said the co-founder of Apes, the director of marketing operations. According to apes exam co-founder, Li Xin, vice president, said the ape exam on the last round of financing when the valuation of 36 million US dollars.

Why a mobile phone APP in the year to quadruple valuation? Abundant question bank products, ape title bank to see how long?

Product line adjustment

From the date of creation, ape exam is the eyes of investors in Hong 饽 饽.

In the first half of 2012, Li Yong, president of Netease Portal Group, officially departed; a few months later, the Internet community "Chalk Web" for the education industry came online. Chalk Network is not yet on the line when they get favored by many agencies, of which, "the fastest action" IDG rapid capital injection of 2.2 million US dollars.

In February 2013, on the basis of reviewing the learning community, the company's team launched the "ape test database" for civil service pro forma products. The product has accumulated nearly 60,000 users in a week's time, the daily online survey up to more than 800,000 times; September, ape question bank in the civil service exam based on the introduction of the question bank product questions, 40 days to obtain more than 3 10,000 users and users covered 6,623 high schools in all 31 provinces and cities excluding Hong Kong, Maucao, and Taiwan.

In the process of going forward, twists and turns are inevitable - In the end of 2013, the 15-month-old Chalk Web officially closed, commenting on unsuccessful attempts to learn the community; in order to concentrate on K12 products, the ape exam bank proactively offline the accounting questions bank and Construction question bank; In order to get users faster, ape question bank will charge product entrance exam questions and civil service exam becomes free, cut off their sources of income.

"The operation of the exam bank is very costly, and we hope that within the limited resources, we will make the first few products available." In the six months since the start of business, the ape exam library team has begun to face product choices.

After discussing, the ape-questions bank team believes that despite the huge market for professional exams, better user-paid ability and gradual development of payment habits, it is necessary to conduct multi-product operations in this area at the same time. Therefore, the ape question bank off the assembly line title and construction of the primary accounting title bank, occupational test products only retain the civil service exam, the judicial exam and the exam.

In the first half of 2014, the paid user rate of the Judicial examination question bank products exceeded 18%, an increase of 3 percentage points over the previous year's payment rate.

And professional exam products "back" in sharp contrast to the K12 products on the "into."

September 2013, ape test database launched the college entrance examination questions, and in May this year on the line for high school sophomore students "high school synchronous question bank." It is revealed that the ape exam in the exam products will soon be on the line.

In late July, the number of subscribers of the Apex Database has reached over 1.6 million in 10 months, while that of the civil servants who have been in the market for 17 months has been increased to 810,000. The number of users of the Judicial Examination and the Q & As has reached 210,000 and 130,000.

Such data undoubtedly more firmly Ape test bank focused K12 products faith.

K12 battle

"K12 is the most important in the near term and in the long term." Li Xin summarized the positioning of K12 products in the ape test program.

However, the K12 product poses more challenges than the civil service exam. For example, compared with the civil service examination materials relatively consistent, college entrance examination in different provinces but a total of 18 different syllabus.

Beginning K12 field apes test Treasure thin ice.

"Making use of online products for high school students who are not so used to online education is a process that requires them a lot of determination. If your content and products are not accurate, they will give up." Li Xin recalls.

In March 2014, offline education agencies also began to exert force online - SSE joins the K12 exam. University of Science and Education launched a personalized intelligent counseling system "e learning big", hoping to continue to accumulate user data to help students get personalized learning path, so as to truly change the learning style.

Jinxin, a professor of education at Xuedu University, once told 21st Century Business Herald that "it is easy for students to use our 10,000 teachers and tens of thousands of students, but it is hard for the Internet team to use so many users at once, They do not have this mandatory means. "

In the previous network activities organized by more knowledge, Jinxin introduction, e learned to launch a line of more than 10,000 teachers in the past six months to build a cover all knowledge points of the exam and explain. "If we were an Internet company, it would be very hard to do this. If we get the support of more than 10,000 teachers, we may have to invest millions or even tens of millions of funds, but for the University, these teachers are all stocks Resources. "Jin Xin said.

As of May this year, the number of users of e-learning has exceeded 150,000. 70% of the students in e-learning use e-lecturing and editing courses, and 40% of students use e-learning to complete assignments.

Relative to the traditional teaching and research in the accumulation of many years of traditional offline counseling agencies, and still in the early ape exam library will be at a disadvantage in the accumulation of educational data? "This has little effect on us." Talked about the traditional institutions to enter the exam bank products, Li Xin faint response.

Li Xin believes that despite the relatively large number of existing trainees in offline tutoring institutions, the ape exams library has obtained over 1.6 million users in less than a year on the line. "In the long run, traditional tutoring institutions and Any one startup company does the same thing. "

Compared to e rely on artificial large-scale analysis of the subject, the ape question bank choose the mode of operation of the machine to optimize the topic analysis.

"Each of our problem analysis not only needs to be analyzed by professional teaching and research team, but also through machine algorithms and big data mining to do optimization, and they (referring to offline counseling agencies) to specify the teacher to resolve is not the same. Massive user response data Help us constantly optimize the analytical content and improve quality, which is more trustworthy than any one teacher to do analysis. "Li Xin introduction, only a college entrance examination, the average daily total of the answer can reach 200 million, which is enough to make ape database Products "run faster."

Ape question bank junior high school question bank products have been in full swing test which will be formally launched in August, college entrance essay and examination of essay products have also been included in the schedule.

Li Xin said that the technical target of ape question bank is to make all questions that can not be answered.

Income exploration

Before September last year, ape question bank products are almost all paid products. In accordance with the "practice", the entrance exam questions at the beginning of the introduction, also chose the charging mode. However, only 40 days on the line, the ape test bank announced a high - the college entrance examination questions free, paid users have paid a full refund.

Reasons to cancel the payment, Li Xin explained, "Students have the need to continue to use the product, but the mastery of payment tools is not so strong, and ultimately lead to many users want to use but can not use." Simply, ape database choice "to give up such a little income, Let users grow faster, make the product run faster. "

Increasingly fierce market competition, or the ape test bank to give up payment model is another important reason.

In 2013, K12 exam product welcomes more players. By the end of November, Joyology and Ladder Network went online one after another. The three co-founders of Joyology all worked for Baidu. The founder of Ladder Network was Gong Haiyan, founder of Century Jiayuan.

Also in November, the civil service training agency Huatu Education launched an online education product - the brick exam, and declared free. As a result, ape question bank once again announced the Civil Service Test Bank product free. At this point, including civil servants line test, Shen Ao question bank, including ape question bank civil servant exam products free of charge across the board.

Li Xin said in an interview, ape question bank "for a long time in the future will not consider the commercialization of things." But in fact, one after another in the exam products free, ape test bank has made a profit model New attempt.

As early as the ape test bank completed in August last year, round B financing, ape title library operations director Shuaike said in an interview, the round of financing will be used for team expansion, the types of exam questions and the future of some value-added services. Shuaike said value-added services, including video broadcast courses. At present Apes has opened the Civil Service Examination and Judicial Examination video courses.

"From the data point of view is still quite good." Li Xin said, apes database of civil servants value-added services have received more than 10 million yuan in revenue, the judicial examination has also received millions of dollars in revenue.

Undoubtedly, the choice of ape question bank won the approval of investors, only this round of 125 million US dollars valuation.

"The Apes exam focuses on K12, which is the largest market in business logic with 200 billion K12 extra-curricular tutoring markets each year." According to Zuo Ling Ye, a China partner at Jingwei, "It is based on this A strategy (Note: key layout K12) approval, we will continue to overweight investment in the ape test bank. "(Editor Lin Kun)

Latitude and longitude China Left Ling Ye: As long as the creation of value, you do not worry about the business model

More than 10 million US dollars, 36 million US dollars, 125 million US dollars, ape problem pool with two years to achieve a valuation leap.

Over the past two years, Apes has realized the transition from learning community to the exam products, made the choice from charging mode to free mode, and firmly entered K12 education in the Red Sea. In the past year, , Happy Studies, ladders and other online education projects have been on the line and into the field of the exam, undergraduate education and other traditional offline guidance agencies also introduced mobile learning products, trying to Fengeng online market.

"The Apes exam focuses on K12, which is the largest market in business logic with 200 billion K12 extra-curricular tutoring markets each year." According to Zuo Ling Ye, a China partner at Jingwei, "It is based on this A strategy (ie focus on the layout K12) approval, we will continue to overweight on the ape exams investment.

While continuously exploring new models in the ape test bank and increasingly fierce competition in the product field of the K12 exam bank, Jingwei China, as the lead agency for the a-bian and a-C round of financing, has greatly raised the valuation of the ape test bank and successively invested in it. (Suntech), Hundreds of words cut and happy studies and other projects.

"21st Century": exam products emerge in an endless stream, what do you think ape test library on the team and products which have significant advantages? Where is the innovation on the product?

Zuo Ling Ye: Before we invested in the ape test bank, we also studied other test bank products. The ape test bank is the first intelligent test bank to do personalized education. It realizes what we often call "teaching students in accordance with their aptitude" Through the intelligent algorithm and recommendation engine in the background, he achieved himself better than the students themselves. He really made it possible for students to practice their own weak points or not so as to enhance the efficiency of their questions and improve their academic performance. We judge This is a revolutionary product, but also a very social thing.

Product, in addition to the above-mentioned intelligence, the team also invested a huge amount of manpower and financial resources, to the questions in the library all the questions are accurate answers and detailed analysis, which made his product won the quality Students trust. It's a hard-working, but far better experience than similar products that use machine reptiles to crawl questions and answers from the Internet.

Ape title bank founder Li Yong led the team, that is, have a very high ability of strategic planning, but also has super execution ability, whether product design, technology, promotion, all ability is very strong. After investing in Round B, we realized through deeper engagement and understanding with the team that this team is an indispensable team in our investment in Internet education. Based on the trust of the team and the optimism of the model, we also led the C round of financing of the ape test bank.

"21st Century": There is a voice that compared to the civil service exam, K12 is too difficult to bite a piece of bone, for the ape exam library team without a K12 education experience would be a considerable challenge. Ape test library team will be more energy into K12 products, investors what kind of attitude? In your opinion, ape question bank future profit model will be like?

Zuo Ling Ye: Ape test library team decided to focus on the K12 products, latitude and longitude as the company's largest investor, we respect and support the team's decision. It is based on the recognition of this strategy, we will continue to overweight on the ape exams investment.

My personal analysis, ape question bank to focus on K12 field, from the business logic that this market is the largest, each year 200 billion K12 tutoring market. K12 field of online education is growing rapidly, the market is very large, I hope more entrepreneurs can enter this area, and the ape exam library to expand the market, latitude and longitude also hope to have more investment in this area.

Ape question bank future profit model is the team thinking, I believe that a product as long as users like to create value for the user, his business model is worry about.

"21st Century": According to the analysis of latitude and longitude, what are the modes of online education enterprises that are on the rise? At present, the main challenge for the development of online education in China is what?

Zuo Ling Ye: online education in China, although for many years, I think this wave of online education is really into the substantive stage, I think all kinds of modes have a chance, whether it is vocational education, English education or K12, We are all very optimistic about the product form, whether it is tool-based software or online school. Jingwei currently invests in four companies in the field of online education. Apart from Apes, there are also Hi-Tech (Suntech), Hundreds of Words, Happy Studies, and we are very much looking forward to investing in more areas of online education.

In my opinion, the most important challenge for the development of online education in China is that students' habits of studying online are yet to be cultivated. We have noticed that students in vocational education, adult English training and skills training are increasingly choosing online education and other fields The progress is slower. (Editor Lin Kun)