Guo Jin leads $15m round for China education platform
Guo Jin Capital, a Shenzhen-based early-stage VC firm, has led a RMB100 million ($15.3 million) Series B round for ABC360, an online English learning platform.
Tencent Incubator and an education-focused VC fund owned by Chinese investment firm Zero2IPO also participated in the round, according to a release.
Founded in 2011, ABC360 matches students with English teachers who are mostly from the Philippines. The company has four teaching centers in Southeast Asia, with a presence in Thailand as well as the Philippines. It has developed a learning evaluation system to monitor teaching quality.
At present ABC360 mainly focuses on first-tier cities, but it is looking to expand into lower-tier cities over the next few years. The platform claims to generate RMB10 million in revenue each month from about 40,000 paid users.
The start-up received seed funding from Shanghai CCI Investments in April 2014 and a Series A round from Sino Wisdom Capital and a fund affiliated with Alibaba Group last year. The latest round will be used to develop new products, provide training for teachers and improve user experience.
Guo Jin Capital was set up in 2007 and has more than RMB1 billion under management across five renminbi-denominated funds and one US dollar fund.
Similar investees to ABC360 include VIPKID, a China-based English learning platform that targets primary and secondary school students, which raised a $20 million Series B round led by Northern Light Venture Capital last year. Meanwhile, VC-backed 51Talk.com acquired industry peer 91Waijiao.com.
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