Dami Wangxiao, a sub-brand of Chinese online education firm VIPKid, has secured $80 million in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital and Tencent Holdings.
According to the company, Dami Wangxiao (or Rice eSchool) aims to offer live-streamed English and Math courses to primary students in China, seeing a growing demand for exam-oriented English and Math education among Chinese primary students at grade three and above, and for cost-effective online education products from families in third and fourth-tier cities.
Incubated and polished by VIPKid for over one and a half years, according to the company statement, Dami Wangxiao is designed to provide more cost-effective education by enabling bigger class sizes. Cindy Mi Wenjuan, Founder and CEO of VIPKid, said the brand was launched to meet the demand of over 700,000 students currently served by VIPKid.
Commenting on the latest development of the company, Mi said,
“Many student users have entered into an examination period after a few years of study on the VIPKid platform. They are in urgent need of an extracurricular training product that can help them balance in-class training and improve Math capability.”
According to the company’s statement, courses under the new VIPKid brand aim to create an immersive learning experience through live-streaming and help specifically to train students in English speaking and listening and Math thinking.
Needless to mention, VIPKid operates as an online education platform that connects children in China with native English-speaking teachers in the United States and Canada for real-time online English immersion learning. Its mission is to inspire and empower every child for the future. Founded in 2013, the company has become China’s market-leading online education platform and currently has over 700,000 paying students and more than 100,000 teachers.
The Beijing-based company has in October 2019 announced the completion of a Series E funding round led by Tencent Holdings. While both the companies did not disclose the financial terms of the round, official statistics show VIPKid’s valuation at over 20 billion yuan ($2.87 billion) after a $500 million Series D+ round from Coatue Management, Tencent and Sequoia Capital in June 2018.
Meanwhile, Yu Haiyang, Managing Director of Tencent Investment, expects Dami Wangxiao to be in a strong position to meet increased demand from Chinese parents for online education, according to the statement issued by the company.
