China’s leading educational institute New Oriental Group announced that its subsidiary Beijing New Oriental Xuncheng Network Technology will receive RMB 320 million (USD 48 million) financing from tech giant Tencent, Tencent news reported on Monday.
The funding will be completed in the first quarter of 2016. Xuncheng will remain an affiliate controlled by New Oriental Group after this round of financing.
Yu Minhong, the founder and chairman of New Oriental Group, said the cooperation between New Oriental Group and Tencent will combine their best resources in the education and IT industry to expedite development in the online education business and to create new products, iFeng Tech reported.
Founded in 2000 in Beijing, Xuncheng operates Koolearn.com, the online education business of the New Oriental Group, an online video course website, and an online education platform for children aged from 3-6. In July 2014 Xuncheng founded online education company with Tencent to launch a popular app called “Uda” for middle school and high-school students studying English.
Sun Chang, CEO of Xuncheng’s online education platform, Koolearn.com said the company will use the investment for developing products, technology and marketing, and consider making investments.
The platform offers about 3000 courses covering six categories including overseas tests, domestic tests, and K12 education. It had over 20 million registered users and 30 million mobile learning users as of November 2015.
The earnings report for the second quarter of New Oriental’s fiscal year 2016 shows that registered users of the platform grew by over 192% and paid users increased by over 215%.
Xuncheng may seek to be listed on China’s New Third Board in the first half of 2016, Tencent News reports.