New financing collapsed, and online children's educational institution Dolphin Music suspended its service

Reporter | Cha Qinjun

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"The teacher said it was the last class because the platform was going offline. I was shocked because (before) there was no hint at all. Emily, who lives in Canada, told Interface Education.

Emily reported to her children an online children's educational institution called Dolphin Music VipSing. On January 19, the institution issued a suspension of service announcement on the official account, due to the failure of the new round of investors to complete the delivery, resulting in a break in cash flow, from January 20, 2022 at 00:00 to suspend all online class services.

Shen Yanshu, founder and CEO of Dolphin Music VipSing, told Interface Education that there is a lot of work to be completed in the past two weeks, including database collation, checking class hours, and receiving inquiries from relevant departments. In response to the reasons for the failure of the new round of financing, and whether there are sufficient funds to deal with the refund of students, Shen Yanshu did not respond for the time being.

According to Shen Yanshu's online letter to teachers, due to the implementation of the "double reduction" policy, the round of financing that was originally negotiated could not be delivered in the end. At the beginning of October 2021, the cash flow was broken, the original high investment and high growth model could not be sustained, and the huge monthly operating research and development costs and market expenditure suddenly had no source. The closure of online advertising also left the company without a customer acquisition channel, and the growth of new users fell off a cliff.

Dolphin Music's announcement shows that Shen Yanshu "has successively advanced more than 11 million yuan to support the company's operation, but ultimately failed to save the company."

During this period, parents still receive notice of renewal from the class teacher.

"At the end of December last year, the class teacher also urged me to continue the class, saying that the price would increase by 15% next year, and if I did not renew the class this year, it would be much more expensive next year." Emily said to Interface Education.

On December 31 last year, Emily spent another 4,835 yuan to renew 80 lessons, while half of the 80 classes purchased in August of the same year were not attended. "I didn't expect that after more than half a month, it was about to go offline." The class teacher is missing, does not reply to messages, and does not answer voice calls. Emily said.

Parents have successively established 4 rights defense groups, "there are still many parents who do not know, because there are many children who go to class on Saturdays and Sundays." Emily said the number of vipSing trainees is nearly 10,000.

According to the parent statistics table provided by Emily, the amount of tuition fees to be refunded exceeds 3.6 million yuan. In addition to domestic parents, there are also many parents of students from the United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore and other overseas regions.

The solution provided by the suspension announcement is that the tuition fees charged after January 1, 2022 for the renewal of classes and new students will be refunded in the same way in the near future, and the confirmation and follow-up placement of the remaining students will start on February 20, 2022.

"Almost all parents who apply for a refund pay before December 31st, because he (the class teacher) clearly said that after January 1st (the course) the price increased, who will buy the class after the price increase?" Emily said to Interface Education.

According to the Tianyancha APP, vipSing's affiliated company is Shanghai Yanjin Information Technology Co., Ltd. On November 18 last year, the company was fined 30,000 yuan by the Shanghai Hongkou District Municipal Supervision Bureau for fictitious original prices, false preferential discounts, false price reductions or price increases, and tricking others into buying courses.

Founded in December 2017, Dolphin Music vipSing is an online children's music education platform that mainly provides music enlightenment and vocal teaching for children aged 3-14.

In May 2021, vipSing completed tens of millions of yuan of A round of financing, led by Shunwei Capital, followed by SoundNet, and the financing funds will be mainly used for technology research and development, curriculum research and development, AI course investment, etc. Previously, angel round investors also included Four Seasons Education, Venture Partner Investment, and Becoming Capital.

Shen Yanshu wrote in the online letter that although the platform is currently suspended, it may be possible to turn Dolphin Music into an open music learning platform in the near future, and provide the accumulated course resources to teachers for free, so that everyone can freely settle in and set their own lesson fees.

Interface Education asked Shen Yanshu to verify the authenticity of the network transmission, as of press time, the other party has not responded.