Beijing’s Online Children Education Platform, VIPKid Completes $500 Million of Financing

VIPKid, the online children education brand has confirmed completion of its Series D+ round of financing with relevant details disclosed.

VIPKid is an online platform providing international learning experience for children in China between the ages of 4 and 12. The Beijing-based company offers immersive one-on-one English language courses that connects Chinese children with US teachers. Ever since its establishment four years ago, it has recruited over 40,000 teachers from North America, with over 300,000 students enrolled.

According to VIPKid, this round of financing was led by world-renowned investment agencies including Coatue, Tencent, Sequoia Capital China and Yunfeng Capital. This has been the largest financing in the global online education field. After completing this round of funding, VIPKid became the only education startup with a valuation of over 20 billion yuan ($3 billion) in China.

According to Reuters China, VIPKid even managed to raise $200 million in series D financing in August last year, with Sequoia Capital as lead investor and Tencent as strategic investor.

Lin Haifeng, managing partner of Tencent Investment, stated: “Tencent places great emphasis on investing in online education and hopes to deepen cooperation with excellent partners like VIPKid to help the Chinese education industry penetrate the global market and explore the boundaries and possibilities of education.”

Obviously, Tencent is not the only tech giant that has set their eyes on online education. As Pandaily has covered, Toutiao launched its online English learning platform for children, gogokid, in May.

SEE ALSO: Toutiao Enters the Online Education Industry with “Gogokid”

According to the “2017 Annual Analysis of China’s Online Education Market”, growth of the online education market will stay robust in the next three years. In 2019, China’s internet education market is expected to reach a scale of 371.8 billion yuan.