Online English Training 51Talk: Subversion of "aristocratic" English education

Tens of thousands of yuan or even tens of thousands of yuan of oral English training has been a sore spot for many English enthusiasts, "tighten the belt to learn English" is the strange situation of English learning. Coupled with the time cost of travelling to and from training institutions, many people who are interested in learning English are discouraged.

At the end of 2011, a "cheap English training" concept of online English training website "51Talk" on-line, relative to similar online training institutions one-on-one courses per class (45 minutes) hundreds of yuan fee, 51Talk per hour (25 minutes) of the fee for only 15 yuan.

Online only one months, 51Talk that is the investment of the Angel funds, and recently, the venture capital agency DCM millions of U.S. dollars investment. By the end of 2012, 51Talk registered more than 100,000 subscribers, paid subscribers, and paid subscribers grew by more than 20% per cent on average.

Pre-starter: Talkchina

Among the three founders of 51Talk, Huang Jiajia was 28 years old, Ting 28, and Jia Yayan 30 years old. Although the team's core members are younger, their entrepreneurial experiences can be traced back to six years ago.

Huang Jiajia's first venture began in 2007. At that time, Huang Jiajia and Ting, graduating from Tsinghua University, saw market opportunities for online language training, but given that the Chinese market was not yet ripe, the "first stop" of language training was put in Japan.

"At that time, every customer just started to do, online shopping is not as popular as it is now." We think it is difficult to do this thing in China, and Japan's Internet development is relatively early, so first face Japan to do this thing. In the same period, the Japanese-language training Network School "Talkchina" online.

By 2011 Huang Jiajia, Ting faded out of Talkchina, the Chinese language training website has been among the top three Japanese language training websites.

After graduating from university in 2007, Huang Jiajia entered Japan's largest trading firm, Mitsubishi, and Ting to the University of Tokyo for a master of linguistics. At the same time, Huang Jiajia is also responsible for the recruitment and management of Talkchina teachers in China, the study of the second Language Ting focus on the construction of the teaching system, a Japanese partner will soon join the Talkchina team, jointly responsible for Japan's specific business.

2010, Huang Jiajia and the lottery of the technical core of the customer network Jia Yayan acquaintance, cooperation in the development of a Japanese-oriented group buying navigation website, together with the Talkchina revision. At this point, the 51Talk start-up team basically built: responsible for the market and operation of the Huang Jiajia, responsible for the development of teaching products Ting, responsible for technology development Jia Yayan.

Talkchina's entrepreneurial experience has become the rapid development of 51Talk entrepreneurial team. This time, their goal is: Subversion EF!

"From the perspective of user demand, even for urban white-collar workers, not all can afford a year 20,000 tuition." Hopefully after 51Talk, we don't have to be so embarrassed, we have a more economical way here. "51Talk target users as ordinary white-collar and general netizens," is not a Gao group, is the General people. ”

Light mode draws capital favor

July 2011, 51Talk registered to set up a company, the same year November, 51Talk Web site online, the same year December, 51Talk Xiaoping contact. "And Xu Teacher met about twenty or thirty minutes, he said, 51Talk must be able to big!", so, 51Talk became the first of the two phase of the fund investment projects.

At the end of 2012, after nearly half a year of contact, DCM invested $ millions of in 51Talk. 51Talk Investor, DCM investment manager Hubert told our correspondent, online education is a general direction, can provide better quality education. For example, it is expensive and difficult to find foreign teachers at home. 20,000 yuan a year of tuition fees and several people to share the time of oral practice, to the teaching body of the time cost will reduce the frequency of learning, and through the network can enjoy a higher quality, more convenient, relatively inexpensive one-on-one oral training services.

51Talk in the online language training market already has a number of players, such as 51Talk, LINEWOW, 91 foreign teachers, Li Yangyi said Tang and English. Among them, Taiwan's online language training enterprise TutorGroup announced in April 2012 to obtain 15 million U.S. dollars investment in qiming venture, the financial resources are mainly used to expand the mainland China market, century Jia Yuan founder Gong two pioneering "91 Foreign Education Network" has also begun the intensive a round of fundraising, Progress is progressing well. What are the advantages of 51Talk in comparison with those in the industry? How to quickly occupy a place in the market?

Huang Jiajia The answer is "light start, light mode." "We're all a little off, and everything saves money."

51Talk mainly uses the third party instant communication tools such as Skype and QQ as the teaching scene, while VIPABC and 91 foreign teachers ' network use their own online system as instructional tools. The use of Third-party instant messaging tools, while there is no use of the "whiteboard" and other teaching tools inconvenience, but for the initial start-up of the 51Talk, also in the client development and bandwidth server upgrades to save a lot of money.

The streamlining of the course sales team is another way of 51Talk light mode. Of the 60-person team in 51Talk, the marketing staff is only five or six people. So far, 51Talk has not carried out large-scale advertising, brand promotion relies mainly on user word-of-mouth and cost-effective products.

"51Talk savings mainly reflected in the operation, such as not renting a very luxurious office, do not spend money to do brand advertising", the investment side DCM to 51Talk of the capital control is very recognized, and its newly invested funds will be mainly used in 51Talk of product development and service upgrades.

And in the operation of the budget is different, 51Talk in teaching research and development, teacher management, teaching services, the investment is relatively high. In order to develop the curriculum and to manage the foreign teachers more effectively, 51Talk has set up a product development and teacher Management Center in the Philippines, and the Ting co-founder of Linguistics, who is resident in the Philippines, is responsible for nearly half of the total number of employees in the Philippines.

The challenge of teaching management and effect evaluation

In order to ensure the quality of teaching and user experience, the management of the Filipino teachers in 51Talk is almost harsh. Huang Jiajia recalls that the beginning of the establishment of foreign teachers have been found to be absent, immediately to the teacher put forward a number of hard requirements. Subsequently, on the one hand, foreign teachers to prepare lessons, attendance and teaching quality strict requirements, on the other hand, to give foreign teachers higher than the local average income salary.

"100 dollars in the course, how much money is the teacher to get, this is the evaluation of the company's user value of the most critical indicators," Huang Jiajia Introduction, 51Talk of teacher costs accounted for more than half of the total income, and from the practice, the offline English training institutions, the teacher costs accounted for only 20% of the course price, More costs will be spent on marketing fees and course consultants.

Recruiting Filipino foreign teachers is one of the ways to improve the price of products in the early 51Talk start-up. "We find the best teachers, the price is the cheapest, and found that the Philippines more reliable." "For each new foreign teacher, 51Talk will carry out a phased training for several weeks, and after each stage, the test will be carried out before entering the next training session."

In the 51Talk Philippine office, there is a team of staff dedicated to the teaching of foreign teachers through the extraction of teacher recordings, tracking college evaluation feedback, etc. "We will have a rule, what kind of situation you will be, you will be suspended, after retraining before you can go online, there are more stringent procedures to control." "Huang Jiajia introduced.

51Talk is currently the only Chinese market to recruit Filipino foreign teachers of English oral online teaching institutions. English in the Philippines is the official language, but not the mother tongue, Filipino foreign teachers can be competent English teaching work? Americans ' thirst for work is not the same as the Filipino's thirst for work, "Huang Jiajia, in addition to Europe and the United States, the low-end market will generally employ the Philippine foreign teachers, this model in Japan and South Korea has existed for many years.

For 51Talk, how to ensure the quality of each teacher's teaching process is a big problem. "There's still a lot of kung fu behind this, and we're just 50%." ”

Different from the vocational education platform, users can evaluate the learning effect through the test pass rate. The English speaking training industry in 51Talk is not easy to evaluate the learning effect by digital. "The evaluation of this link is the most difficult part of all educational institutions," Huang Jiajia Introduction "Oral evaluation is very subjective, not standardized. ”

Online English training industry is different from the traditional Internet enterprises, it is difficult to have a larger scale advantage. 91 Foreign Teachers Network founder Gong told our correspondent, the online English training enterprises are expected to achieve break-even point, the net interest rate will remain around 10%. Huang Jiajia has a basic attitude towards this estimate.