Alibaba leads Series D for China education start-up

Yunfeng Capital, C Ventures, and Bertelsmann Asia Investments also took part in the round. It takes the company's overall funding past RMB2 billion. Previous rounds featured the likes of Source Code Capital, Legend Star, Delian Capital, and Baidu Ventures.

The five-year-old business, which started out with $1 million in seed funding from Legend Star, has two core products focused on homework. The first provides personalized exercises for students and the second helps teachers manage homework assignments and identify problems. Knowbox claims these are used by more than 40 million primary school teachers and students across 100,000 schools in nearly 400 cities.

The proceeds of the new round will go towards expanding the company's user base, user experience, and suite of apps. There are also plans to drive technological development with a view to harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning to deliver customized solutions at scale, while minimizing costs.

Ye Liu, the former general manager of Baidu's strategic cooperation department who founded Knowbox and currently serves as its CEO, said in a statement that "the essence of AI is to return learning to students." He believes the traditional offline approach characterized by fixed class duration, fixed course content, and fixed pace of delivery doesn't meet the learning needs of individuals. AI can bring personalized education to thousands of students simultaneously, he added.

"Knowbox uses innovative models to optimize product supply, and this creates more opportunities for more children to receive a high-quality yet cost-effective education," said Feng Gang, a vice president for strategic investment at Alibaba.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Technology
• China
• Education
• TMT
• Alibaba Group
• Yunfeng Capital
• Bertelsmann Asia Investments