Zhang Yuwei
Founder of Easy Group
In the era of globalization, Chinese entrepreneurs shine brightly overseas. Hurun Report's "2021 National Innovation Outstanding People Selection" was released, and Zhang Yuwei, founder of Easy Group, was selected as the most potential list and interviewed by Hurun Report.
From an international student to the founder of Easy Group Yiwei Education Group, Zhang Yuwei used his own experience as a method to lead the team to deepen the field of international higher education counseling, focusing on serving the international student group centered on the university for nine years, committed to building a platform for sharing advantageous educational resources, providing more efficient integrated learning solutions, so that international students can also enjoy the superior educational resources that match the learning experience of local students.
Since its inception, Easy Group has accumulated a team of tutors and knowledge bases graduated from world-renowned universities, helping many international students overcome language barriers and cultural differences by building a bridge between Chinese and Western educational resources and complementary advantages, improving academic capabilities faster and better, integrating into overseas life, and achieving academic success.
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Originated from international students and service international students
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Studying abroad is a lonely journey in life. In 2008, Zhang Yuwei, who had just studied in Canada, was deeply touched by this, and how to help international students overcome information asymmetries, language and cultural barriers, and differences in the education system became his original intention to establish Easy Group.
Different from many study abroad consulting institutions with a single business, Easy Group, founded in 2014, is composed of five major brand systems: EasyWay, Easy Learning, Easyway, Easyway, And Micro, and the Group's business covers a full set of services from the first two years of study abroad applications before entering the university, academic counseling during the four years of university, and three years of post-university graduate and workplace education to connect academics and society and the workplace.
Zhang Yuwei believes that the anxiety of being eliminated academically and the loneliness of lack of social interaction in life are the two most important pain points for international students. In 2020, the spread of the epidemic has aggravated the loneliness and uncertainty of overseas study life, and has also caused the entire study abroad industry to experience a lot of turmoil. In the face of the impact of the epidemic, Easy Group has accelerated the development of online education applications, transferred all offline tutoring courses to online, and broken the situation with an online, technology-enabled education model; on the other hand, Easy Group has also launched the "Easy Youth" project for international students who stay in China, creating a community for them to help each other and link high-quality contacts, and received a lot of positive feedback.
In Zhang Yuwei's view, the reason why Easy Group has been able to understand the potential needs of international students since its inception is because, like themselves, most of the people in the team have the background and experience of studying abroad, so that they naturally have the empathy of international students and can put themselves in the shoes of international students to think about the problems and challenges that international students may face in living and learning in foreign countries.
The recovery of the study abroad market, higher educational service requirements
Although the outbreak of the new crown epidemic has cooled down the long-term fever of going abroad, with the reopening of the border, the resumption of offline teaching, and more and more domestic vaccines recognized by overseas countries, many people have put the study abroad program that has been stagnant because of the epidemic on the agenda, and the keywords of the study abroad market in 2021 have also shifted from the "downturn" in 2020 to the "recovery".
Taking the UK as an example, according to the 2021 UK Student Visa Statistics Report released by the UK government, as of September 2021, the number of student visas has increased by 143% over the previous year, an increase of 55% over the pre-COVID-19 pandemic, a record high.
For the future development prospects of the industry, Zhang Yuwei is still full of confidence, "Affected by the epidemic, the market size of China's study abroad service industry has appeared in 2020, but under a series of favorable policies such as the state's encouragement to study abroad, the basic expectation of studying abroad has not changed much, and there is still a relatively stable growth." Moreover, as students become more demanding of their academic goals, we see a very positive development in this track. Zhang Yuwei said.
In Zhang Yuwei's view, changes in the international environment also put forward higher requirements for education service providers, and practitioners in the education industry should pay more attention to the local academic environment and related industry rules, conduct timely strategic research and judgment on policy trends, media information, etc., and pay more attention to the vital interests of international students and pay attention to students' emotional and psychological changes.
Conversation with Zhang Yuwei
Since its inception in 2014, what do you think are the important development milestones for Easy Group?
Zhang Yuwei: Since the establishment of Easy Group eight years ago, there have been many important milestones, including the opening of the US journey in 2018; in 2019, we will shift the focus of functional departments back to China, reorganize and build new product lines, learn from the characteristics and rich experience of domestic education products, and once again go global with the advantages of education service models, and obtain A round of financing in 2020 to start online transformation and self-developed technology platform development.
What is the core competitiveness of Easy Group compared to other study abroad educational institutions? How do you define it?
Zhang Yuwei: The core advantage is that we have been working hard in this overseas teaching and auxiliary track for many years. Before entering the United States, Yiwei Education already has eleven campus layouts in Canada, spanning the whole territory of Canada, has many years of market precipitation and practice, should be the first to try the forerunner of university teaching, the cognition and experience of this market, is more difficult for other brands to match.
Although Yiwei Education has a commercial appearance, we have always adhered to the original intention of educators, which I think is extremely precious for education enterprises, not to pursue rapid expansion, but closer to the original intention and essence of education, the pursuit of benign and healthy development.
The epidemic has promoted the transformation of offline education to online, compared with face-to-face teaching, what challenges has Easy Group encountered in the transformation of online? How did you and your team respond?
Zhang Yuwei: The transformation of online has put forward higher requirements for the teaching ability of tutors and the organizational ability of courses; more rigorous academic norms are also needed to protect students' learning achievements; in addition, new topics and challenges have also been put forward for the ability of online technology research and development teams.
In the specific U.S. market, for example, the challenges we face also include differences in cultural backgrounds and the greater investment required to operate locally. Although there are relatively mature online tool products overseas, the online education product model of North American universities is still in a relatively early stage, more is one-way content output, simple matching, lack of systematic teaching and research system, north American teaching and auxiliary market also lacks community operation service links.
In view of these challenges, through years of accumulated experience in Chinese course operation, we have conducted full research before entering the English market, avoided the model loopholes of overseas competitors focusing on platform attributes and lack of service awareness, played a service advantage, and brought domestic mature education products, service experience and business models to the sea, taking into account product cost performance and service quality.
What other collaborations does Easy Group have with other companies?
Zhang Yuwei: Easy Career, a subsidiary of Easy Group, undertakes overseas recruitment services such as ape coaching and recruitment. In terms of online production and research, we also joined Amazon's education technology entrepreneurship acceleration program "AWS EDSTART" to provide more solutions for the company's online education technology development.
What other development plans does Easy Group have in the coming year?
Zhang Yuwei: While maintaining the steady growth of the Chinese business sector, we plan to continue to make efforts in the direction of "English business line" and "pre-retention application and post-retention career development", and continue to polish the English large class products. You can imagine a picture: the English foreign teachers who were popular in China before, and then the Chinese overseas to tutor English Speaking students' courses, this will be a very meaningful "going to sea".
For matters related to the selection application, please feel free to consult the selection assistant.
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