Jianzhi Education Files IPO in the United States after Being Rejected at Home
On July 13th, EST, Jianzhi Education submitted its prospectus to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), eyeing to raise $50 million. The pricing terms were not disclosed.
Jianzhi’s application came after Didi was censored due to its handling of data security. Previously, Keep, Ximalaya and LinkDoc all canceled their IPO plans in the United States amid concern over possible effects of the Didi app removal.
The education firm plans to use the fresh funds to produce new educational content and purchase some products from third parties. Sales, revenue, customer service, potential acquisitions and strategic investments, and daily operation also take a share of the fund.
Jianzhi Education has failed to go public in Hong Kong four times, but the reasons for those failures were not disclosed.
Established in 2011, Jianzhi Education was formerly known as Sentu Education. It was listed on the New Third Board in May 2016, and then delisted in November 2017. Its revenue in the first quarter of 2021 was 98.374 million yuan, up 80% year-on-year.
The Beijing-based firm’s official website shows that it relies on cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies to provide digital education content and intelligent education solutions for domestic universities and other customers.
As of March 31, 2021, the company’s educational content library contains more than 25,000 online courses with a total duration of about 4,500 hours, of which more than 70% are self-developed, covering entrepreneurship guidance, professional skills training, and professional certification exams.
The prospectus also mentions that Jianzhi Education currently provides online services for about 2,000 institutions of higher learning in China.
“Higher education institutions pay more and more attention to providing students with practical training. However, their academic courses are poor in practicality, which makes it difficult for graduates to directly apply the knowledge learned in school to the workplace,” the prospectus shows. By attending vocational courses online, users are able to obtain professional certificates in addition to simply improving their job skills.
According to data provided by Frost & Sullivan, the online vocational education market scale has increased from 36.9 billion yuan in 2016 to 75.3 billion yuan in 2020, and is expected to reach 175.9 billion yuan in 2025.
