Beijing-based edtech Leleketang has raised USD 40 million in a Series C round led by Owl Ventures and joined by existing investors including Morningside Venture Capital, Lightspeed China Partners, New Oriental Education and Culture Industrial Fund, and BlueRun Ventures, 36Kr reported on Wednesday.
Mao Ying, who founded Leleketang in 2014, told 36Kr that new funds will be used for talent hiring, content development, and technology upgrades.
On its app called Tiantianlian, Leleketang provides pre-recorded short videos, which are designed to teach students from primary to high school various subjects such as English and Maths. For example, a two-minute video showing grade-one students how to differentiate numbers from one to five has been played more than 4 million times. Tiantianlian has already attracted a total of 50 million users.
In addition, the company sells videos to extracurricular training agencies, which are produced based on text books published by, among others, People’s Education Press and Beijing Normal University Publishing Group. A total of 4,000 agencies have adopted the company’s video products, called Leleqingke, to teach nearly 1 million students in more than 300 cities in China.
The online education sector has been flushed with venture capital recently, as the COVID-19 pandemic is shifting learning from classrooms to homes. Beijing-based Yuanfudao, an edtech startup covering K12 and adult education, recently raised USD 1.2 billion, following a USD 1 billion round in March.
Zuoyebang, a Beijing-based homework support platform, completed its Series E round raking in a total of USD 750 million from a group of investors including Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital China, and SoftBank’s Vision Fund I, KrASIA reported in June.