SIG leads $22m round for China training platform
Susquehanna International Group’s SIG Asia Investments has led a $22 million Series B round of funding for Yunxuetang, a Chinese cloud-based vocational training platform that works with companies like China Mobile and Lenovo.
Yunxuetang was established in 2011 as an end-to-end online corporate training provider, with services covering lesson delivery and management, teaching and homework materials, and examinations. It has also introduced communication software solutions that allow for collaborative learning and an online mall-style platform through which companies can source additional training services.
The company claims to have nearly 10 million registered users, with hundreds of thousands of people accessing the platform every week, and has worked with more than 300,000 companies to date. Vocational courses are overseen by a team of 1,200 lecturers with a particular focus on eight sectors, including property, financial services and retail.
Ruize Lu, Yunxuetang’s founder, said revenue came to RMB100 million ($14.5 million) last year and is expected to reach RMB3 billion in 2017, local media reported. He added that the new capital will go towards improving the platform’s content aggregation capabilities, enhancing enterprise training services, and building out the sales team.
Lu Guo, a partner at SIG, noted that there are more than 10 listed companies in the corporate training space in the US and Europe, and greater integration between online and offline service components. While the industry is growing at 15% a year in China, it doesn’t yet have the same level of integration, hence the opportunity for businesses like Yunxuetang that have a cloud-based model.
The company previously received RMB40 million in angel funding and then a RMB80 million Series A round in 2014, led by local investor Everest Capital.
Previous private equity investment activity in China’s vocational training industry includes CITIC Capital’s acquisition of Study & Share, which focuses on the construction sector. The company was fundamentally an offline training provider and CITIC saw potential in expanding the business online.
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