Chinese IT education startup teaches you how to make your own <em>Flappy Bird</em> clone, gets $22M investment

Jike Xueyuan (极客学院; literally translates to “Geeks College”) is an online education startup specializing in teaching IT-related career skills. The company just received a US$22 million series B round of funding from SIG Asia and BlueRun Ventures, according to QQ Tech.

Launched just this year, Jike reports it has 120,000 users and over 300 courses on offer covering Android and iOS development, HTML5, Java, and more. With this latest round of funding, it will expand into more web development technologies such as PHP.

The business model is similar to US-based Lynda, selling monthly memberships at RMB 30 (US$4.89) per month and RMB 260 (US$42.35) per year.

A course typically consists of six to 12 hours of video tutorials. All courses come with instructors, to whom students can ask questions a in forum-style comment thread. Rather than dry and often theoretical university classes, Jike aims for a more applicable approach with instant gratification. Courses include how to make your own Flappy Bird game, how to make a weather app, and how to make a chat robot on Android.

See: Chinese crash course education startup for designers and animators secures $30M funding

(Source: QQ Tech)