Kaikeba.com, a Chinese online vocational education platform, has raised 600 million yuan ($93 million) in its Series B1 financing round, the company has announced recently.
While it didn’t disclose the names of the investors, the Beijing-headquartered EdTech startup said Chinese investment bank Taihecap facilitated the transaction.
The new development came roughly a year after it spun off the vocational education platform from its parent company, Huike Group, and independently raised 550 million yuan ($85 million) in its Series A funding round led by Chinese Venture Capital firm Gaorong Capital and GL Ventures, the VC unit of private equity major Hillhouse Capital, in August 2020.
Kaikeba plans to use the fresh funds to upgrade its vocational education business and improve brand management.
Launched in 2013 by Huike Group, a leading enterprise in the field of higher education and new vocational education in China, Kaikeba focuses on the systematic IT, Internet, and digital fields. It integrates first-line teachers and practical projects of world-renowned IT and internet companies and provides popular online courses such as Java, Front-end Website Development, Data Analysis, Python, AI, and Internet of Things (IoT), among others.
With the belief that it can help users achieve sustainable career development, Kaikeba strives to transform itself from IT-related online education services to offer multi-discipline courses in fields of design, data intelligence, human resource, engineering, and management, among others. The platform integrates different teaching forms such as live broadcast, recorded video, AI interactive script, online programming laboratory, scene interactive courseware, comprehensive test, etc., to meet the diverse learning needs of users in different industries at different stages.
Kaikeba claims to have over 5 million paying students and more than 3,500 teachers on its platform. In its latest statement, Kaikeba said it registered nearly 3.5-fold year-on-year growth in its earnings in the first half of this year.
The Beijing-based education technology platform claims to have strategic cooperation with leading technology and internet firms such as Microsoft, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, IBM, Amazon, Adobe, Didi Chuxing, etc.
According to a report by Chinese market research institute 100ce.cn, the country’s vocational education industry saw funding worth 4.34 billion yuan ($670 million) in the first half of this year.
