Online education can be said to be the hottest entrepreneurial field nowadays, in which K12 (elementary and elementary education) is regarded as a huge gold mine with limitless potential. China's online education market was up to 83.97 billion yuan in 2013 and is expected to grow by about 20% in 2014-2017, according to Eric. Among them, K12 is the fastest-growing subdivision area, accounting for the ratio from 2013 to 7.4% to 12.2%, to 21.15 billion yuan.
And in recent months to obtain financing of learning treasure (a round of 3 million U.S. dollars), Aicola (a round of tens yuan), Couba June (a round of 5 million U.S. dollars), Wisdom Class network (a round of 10.6 million U.S. dollars), a job network (c round 20 million USD) and so on, The focus on K12 start-up companies to constantly refresh the value of the breakthrough billion dollars, which is enough to prove that this is a huge market with imagination.
K12 is a start-up company focused on mobile education, founded in August 2014. Its core team is a group of graduates from Tsinghua University, Couba, who have won the physics competition, have gone through a traditional education and are determined to do something to change the traditional education at the age of 30-to integrate the technology of the Internet into the educational resources, and to improve students ' learning behavior through the analysis and application of large data.
Mining K12 Gold Mine
Yangdong founder CEO of Beijing University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has served as the Intel China Research Institute of scientists, Baidu distributed senior research and development experts, participated in the early Baidu large data platform to build. Before joining the online education, he was a group CTO in the company of the shares listed companies, and also participated in a lot of work in product operation and investment business, this experience to his help, in his own words is "can see clearly which is the market."
Yangdong, it is K12 this huge market. "Why do I choose K12 Education? Because now online education is hot and K12 is very malleable. I think this is the right time, and now there is a lot of capital in the market, and China's online education is on a very good momentum. ”
The online education Enterprise's one kind of play is moves the offline mode to the line, like learns and thinks the excellent, YY's 100 education, involves the real-time interactive live electronic classroom, the after-school work system, the school management system, after class class circle and so on. Or choose to build a bank, to build a learning interaction platform, such as Magic Square, ape questions Bank, a job network, as well as through UGC or technology to achieve the Web site app such as Aicola, Couba June, Baidu job help.
BAT and other giants have also been eyeing the heat of online education, based on the respective internet advantages of different degrees of layout: Alibaba launched 2b+2c teacher private education "Taobao classmate", Tencent launched a number of online education institutions to integrate the resources of the "Tencent Classroom", and Baidu is based on Baidu know the launch of online education products "homework help , there are also the main content from the College network courses NetEase Open class.
However, in Yangdong view, the problem of K12 education is not lack of content, but the content is too much, but the essence of things diluted in the dross. How can students find what is best for them from a huge pool of resources? Can the content be personalized through technical means and get a higher level of presentation? Yangdong thought of the big data that he was good at.
In depth students just need
In the field of education, successful enterprises are the solutions to meet the needs of users. such as the new Oriental English Training abroad, civil service training in China Map education, as well as postgraduate guidance, certification and so on various qualifications. This is also true in the K12 field, if a tool or platform does not address the needs of students and parents, it can only be an offline supplement to traditional education, and will not produce its own unique value.
After considering the advantages of technology and resources, Yangdong decided to search questions as the cut-in point. "Students encounter problems that will not be done, they will go to the textbook, find answers, to parents and teachers for help, but the first search book index is very troublesome, some content is not directly found." Then from this angle, the question retrieval will be a just need. You have to go into the first place and just have to do a little bit to get the whole thing done. ”
After one months of development, Tuo Xin Elite September launched the first product "Elite math", search and primary and secondary math questions analysis. On the data of the test bank, we choose the elite network with 50 million student users, each of which has a first-line teacher to provide detailed analysis and answer. The app also provides voice input search and specially designed keyboard and symbol lists to help students record puzzles for later review.
Yangdong believes that the convenient input mode + powerful search engine + the careful sedimentation of the bank and intelligent user Log analysis, can provide students and parents the most comfortable experience. But at the same time, he said, the product is still in continuous grinding, the current function is not perfect. But what it wants to express is what the core wants to do--backed by a huge pool of database resources, the use of large data to show the results of accurate questions, so as to create the K12 field of search first entrance.
Integrating resources with technology and data-driven education
Data collection and analysis make all the behaviors of the user become clearer, and the process of learning can be properly supervised and managed by mining and feedback. The original Baidu cloud and large data chief architect Lin Shi-ding "Cloud School", to SaaS model in the cloud to build a standard school structure, to help the primary and secondary schools to improve the management level and teaching ability, it is behind the analysis of large data and application.
In the catalytic of cloud technology and large data, education is changing, and it provides more convenience, individuation and pluralism for online education.
Yangdong that to do a good online education enterprises, not only to understand education also to understand the Internet, first of all, the education resources and technology put forward very high requirements, and then need to have channels to promote. Therefore, in the expansion of the team, Tuo hin excellent staff background is the Internet and education Enterprises merged, has come from BAT's top engineers and operators, but also from the new Oriental and learn to think of the famous teachers.
"In particular, the technical team, are rich in experience and deep accumulation of Daniel, they have very strong data sensitivity." My team also has a characteristic, is that everybody is the study very good student, some or Couba, from an early age is the science and Engineering competition's winner. So we are good students from the entrepreneurial team, did a helping students improve their academic performance, find their own learning deficiencies. ”
With the rich excellent network of the bank, with independent research and development of technology, Tuo Xin Elite also has a cooperative party school communication channels This three-point advantage allows Yangdong to develop confidence in the future growth of the elite: "Content, technology, channels are ready-made, which allows us to concentrate on the product, not to consider the business model for the time being." And what we do does not burn money, it just integrates a lot of existing resources into the K12 field. ”
"Data and technology is our core competitiveness, and now it's important to search engine optimization, background algorithm expansion and more personalized user use." In the big Data age, online education may eventually come to the scene is that students do not need to search questions or input, as long as open my application can know what you want to learn, what to look for. "Yangdong said.
(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)