In order to get rid of the educational label, a good future into smart hardware and life sciences

Reporter | Cha Qinjun

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Good Future (NYSE:TAL) is moving away from the label of an education company and moving toward the positioning of a tech company.

On March 18, according to people close to Good Future, Good Future is adjusting its business and organization in a timely manner according to the dynamics of education policies, looking for new business fulcrums, breakthroughs and growth paths, and shifting to non-education categories such as technology services, smart hardware and life sciences.

According to the above-mentioned person to interface education, the company's breakthrough in intelligent hardware is a product called "Little Monkey Intelligent Learning Lamp".

At present, the product has been launched on the Taobao Xueersi flagship store and the WeChat Monkey Intelligent Self-operated Store, but no related products have been found in Jingdong. Taobao product parameters show that the listing time of the little monkey intelligent learning lamp is March 7 this year, and the price is 1198 yuan.

According to the customer service of Xueersi flagship store, the little monkey intelligent learning lamp is not oriented to the middle and high school stages, only suitable for primary school students from the first to the sixth grade, providing the mainstream version of the textbook content of Chinese, mathematics and English, and the ancient text covers the primary and secondary schools.

Compared with other learning lights on the market, a big difference in this product is that it provides a library of mathematical teaching and research problems for learning and thinking. In addition, common functions include fingertip checks, homework checks, word checks, and text reading.

Confirmed by the above-mentioned persons, the video number "Little Monkey Intelligent Learning Lamp" is its official account, and its registered subject is Weidu Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. According to the Tianyancha APP, the company was established in June 2014, the legal representative is FengSha, the registered capital is 12 million yuan, and it is wholly owned by Good Future.

On March 10, Good Future also established Shenzhen Xingtong Technology Co., Ltd., whose business scope includes the sale of electronic products and smart home consumer equipment. The registered capital is 500,000 yuan, and the legal representative is Feng Xingxing. Feng Xingxing also serves as the legal representative of several subsidiaries of Good Future, including its childcare brand Beijing Pixin Childcare Service Co., Ltd.

Compared with the blocked subject training, the education intelligent hardware track is in a period of rapid growth.

According to iResearch data, the intelligent education hardware market, including traditional and new products, will reach 34 billion yuan in 2020 and is expected to reach 60 billion yuan in 2022.

"The epidemic has allowed students to gradually adapt to the family scene, and self-study or follow-up through smart hardware will indeed trigger a big outbreak in the smart hardware market." Ge Wenwei, a partner at Whale Capital, told Interface Education, "Coupled with the large number of K12 subject categories, large age spans, and regional versions, this is not a monopoly market that can accommodate multiple companies." ”

In addition to the original traditional hardware companies represented by Shushulang and BBK, there are also Internet manufacturers such as Alibaba and ByteDance aiming at the track. After the "double subtraction", new players such as iFLYTEK, New Oriental, Ape Tutoring, and Homework Gang are also accelerating their admission.

A person close to the homework gang revealed that the company is about to officially launch its new brand of smart hardware "carbon oxygen", including learning pens, learning lights, learning headphones, meow machines, home learning printers and other categories, and will also launch smart watches, smart printers, multi-functional desks and so on in the future.

Chen Jing, vice president of Blue Elephant Capital Investment, told Interface Education: "The hardware itself is the business of the channel, the brand difference is not large, and it is difficult for users to feel the difference between the 1,000 yuan and 2,000 yuan products. The core problem of all hardware products is whether the content is good and whether the viscosity is high. ”

Ge Wenwei also said, "All education hardware must be combined with content to have vitality." ”

In his view, online education companies from the Internet, especially head unicorns, have certain innate advantages in smart hardware. From the perspective of team composition, "although a lot of so-called teaching management talents have been recruited in the past few years, their core team is still a technical team, so their grasp of intelligent hardware, transformation and supply chain management may have more advantages." ”

The education hardware products such as New Oriental and Homework Gang, online e-commerce sales and user review data are still in the early stages, far lower than those of Youdao Education Intelligent Hardware, ByteDance Smart Lights and other products.

"The end result will definitely be the same destination, like climbing Everest, some from the north slope, some from the south slope." Ge Wenwei told interface education, "The final growth result may be very close, but in the process, the team of technical genes should make up for the shortcomings of content, and the traditional education enterprises with content advantages should strengthen the shortcomings of technology and hardware." ”

In Ge Wenwei's view, at present, the cash and talent reserves of these head companies are not much different, and the determination and patience of this matter is the key to determining the final game of intelligent education hardware.

In addition to hardware, another major focus of good future power is education informatization.

As early as last December, Good Future officially announced the upgrading of its To B business and launched a new brand of American School, providing complete live broadcasting, teaching and research, and AI system solutions for the education industry. The organizational structure of Good Future has also been adjusted, and the original technical middle office, data middle office, and content middle office have all been merged into the American school, and Tian Mi, CTO of Good Future, is responsible.

According to the R&D personnel of the Future Teaching and Research Cloud, China is vast, and the teaching content of different places is not the same, and how to meet the personalized and localized needs of these public schools is a difficult problem facing the public service education enterprises.

In the view of the R & D personnel, to solve these problems, one must have massive content resources and teaching and research tools, and the other must have excellent technical strength.

Life sciences are also one of the directions of good future transformation exploration. As early as 2018, the company has established a brain science laboratory and reached relevant agreements with a number of universities to cooperate in exploring research in the field of brain science.