Chinese education startup 17zuoye raises $100M series D from Lei Jun, Yuri Milner, etc.

Online education is booming in China. On the eve of the Chinese new year, online education platform 17zuoye has announced that it has raised a series D round worth US$100 million, according to Duozhi. This brings the company’s total valuation to US$600 million.

The round was led by H Capital (which also invested in 17zuoye’s series C), and other investors included Temasek, Yuri Milner/DST, and Lei Jun’s Shunwei (which has invested in every 17zuoye round starting with its series A).

17zuoye is an online learning platform for students K-12, as well as teachers and parents. The name means “homework together” in Chinese, and the site aims to serve as a nexus for all three groups to facilitate the educational experience, focusing on English and Math classes. For example, for students one service it offers is an automated system that allows them to record English sentences and get instant feedback on pronunciation. Teachers can then listen to their students’ recordings at any time. Parents can even get real-time reports on their kids via WeChat. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

17zuoye founder Liu Changshui believes that to be successful, an education platform has to “collaborate extensively with first-rate global companies,” and he has said that some of this latest cash injection will go towards setting up more third-party collaborations, in addition to improving and optimizing its existing services.

Online education is a hot market in China right now, but 17zuoye, which was founded in 2007, has shown especially explosive growth. Two years ago the site had just over 1 million students; now it has more than 7 million. In July of last year alone, for example, the site added more than 130,000 students to its rolls.

Chart via 20th Century Business Herald

Of course, there’s plenty of competition in China’s online education space, and in English education in particular. Tech giant YY, for example, recently bought out the team of a high-profile English teacher and techie with the aim of expanding its own offerings in the online English-teaching arena. 17zuoye will have to work to keep expanding its offerings and its userbase, but with another US$100 million in the war chest, it has certainly bought itself more time to grow.

(Source: Duozhi)