After the life and death situation, the fancy transformation of online education companies

When the three words of ape counseling appeared in front of the public again, nearly two years had passed since those confused years.

On the afternoon of May 30, 2023, on the eve of Children's Day, Ape Tutoring held a grand product launch conference in Beijing Guomao. It is aimed at primary and secondary school students across the country, and launches the little ape learning and training machine, focusing on the integration of learning and practice to promote learning through practice, priced at 3899 yuan. This means that Ape Tutoring officially announced its entry into the smart hardware market, taking the first historic step.

Silence is the theme word of ape tutoring for a period of time. If it doesn't proactively send signals, it's hard for the outside world to know that the company is still strongly exploring new ways forward.

Under the storm, the "ferry" chosen by Ape Tutoring is intelligent hardware, but whether it can keep the clouds open and see the moon needs to wait for the test of the market.

At the same time, the online education companies looking for a new "ferry" are not only Ape Tutoring, but also the head online education companies such as Homework Gang, New Oriental, Gaotu, and Good Future that have deeply relied on the K12 track, have adjusted their positioning and tried almost all the transformation directions within their ability.

From a high-spirited star giant to a low-key and silent entrepreneurial company, they make coffee, open study rooms, make edition business, live broadcast e-commerce, research and development of educational hardware, development of educational intelligent systems, launch adult education or quality education courses... After trying again and again, the current more formed path is live streaming e-commerce and education hardware.

The new "tech group" born out of online education companies is different from pure tech companies and content companies. The former has a stronger comprehensive gene since its birth, not only the ability to push the ground for offline breakthroughs, but also the ability to innovate online and create content.

When these capabilities are applied to the company's intrapreneurial team, they translate into concrete business projects. Whether it is the star effect brought by live streaming e-commerce, or the education hardware that has not yet appeared star products, the people in the business track have changed one stubble after another, projects have been eliminated one after another, and the business logic itself has not changed much, the only change is the fate of each company during the transformation.

Transformation "spearhead"

Before ape tutoring went from fog to clear land, many media thought that it transformed into down jackets and coffee. In fact, it is inaccurate to say so.

After 2021, Ape Tutoring adjusted the company's authority and established Kangyun Holding Group, whose business covers education technology, new consumer goods and other sectors, and coffee and down jackets are subordinate to Kangyun Holdings, which has nothing to do with Ape Tutoring. The two are two independent lines.

After completing the compliance process, Ape Tutoring became a non-profit institution and obtained a school license, and the company's registered name was changed from "Beijing Ape Power Education Technology Co., Ltd." to "Beijing Ape Power Technology Company", and the company's positioning was completely different from the original.

From this point of view, it is better to understand the legitimacy of Ape Tutoring's launch of educational hardware products. It also sees the smart hardware market as a blue ocean with a lot of room for growth. Data show that since 2021, 452 new learning hardware-related enterprises have been added in mainland China; Data from Frost & Sullivan predicts that the total market size of China's smart learning devices will reach 145 billion yuan by 2026.

Ape Tutoring is a latecomer to the field, and earlier, ByteDance's Vigorous Education launched a smart learning lamp, which sold the market in a short period of time and attracted many peers to follow suit. Not to be left behind, Tencent launched the AILA smart work light, which is similar in function and concept to the powerful intelligent learning lamp.

Among the leading online education companies, the first batch of smart hardware to enter the game is Homework. In 2017, Homework Gang launched a wrong question printer, since then out of control, there are currently 6 hardware products, 618 period, the highest price Homework Help learning machine 2299 yuan, the lowest meow meow word card 135 yuan.

In September 2022, Xueersi, an educational intelligent hardware product under Good Future, Xuepai, and New Oriental Online reached a cooperation with Tmall Genie to launch a dictionary pen. Coupled with smart education hardware giants such as BBK, iFLYTEK, and Yoshulang, the speed of product innovation in this market has accelerated rapidly.

Compared with past products that emphasized "learning", ape tutoring has added the concept of "practice".

Wang Xiangdong, head of the ape tutoring tool business, said at the press conference, "Through massive user research, it is found that the proportion of children's practice scenes in daily learning is very high, but in terms of scientific system learning and training design, learning data, personalized exercises, ability growth system models and other ways to improve learning efficiency and quality, the previous intelligent hardware has not been satisfied. ”

This allows ape tutoring to find opportunities. "The little ape learning machine has changed most linear and passive one-way input products, and pays more attention to promoting learning through practice, so that the learning process changes from passive reception to active inquiry, which is easier to stimulate children's curiosity and imagination." Wang Xiangdong said.

Many parents judged: "The little ape learning machine team should have children, and its closed-loop system can solve a lot of parents' confusion." According to the Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe), compared with the learning hardware of downloadable apps on the market, the little ape learning machine adopts a closed system and cannot download other games and video apps.

One of the big advantages of online education companies switching to hardware comes from content accumulation. On April 26, Good Future and Xueersi reached strategic cooperation with 10 domestic publishing houses to promote digital content cooperation. In 2022, the new strategy formulated by Hao Future is "science and education, science and innovation, and science popularization", science and education is content research and development, science popularization is content dissemination, science and technology innovation is intelligent hardware content, and the front-end-to-back business settings of the trinity.

The layout of ape tutoring is similar to that of Good Future. The back-end is more than 800 million exclusive question banks, knowledge points, relationship links, and learning big data, and in the middle is intelligent technology, so that knowledge points, question types, video lectures, analysis and tens of billions of learning behavior big data achieve efficient collaboration.

Wu Taiwei, a senior investment consultant at East High-tech, once told Securities Daily that "education hardware was often regarded by online education companies as a low-cost traffic entry for customer acquisition in the past. At that time, some early-moving enterprises had already obtained dividends by deploying intelligent hardware. ”

Another reason why companies are eager to build their own hardware products is to build a complete business closed-loop system so that more content can have room to land.

He further said that after the implementation of the "double reduction" policy, the role of hardware products has not only been more than that, but shoulders the task of "pioneer" in the transformation of various enterprises.

But overall, the transformation of online education companies still lacks a very representative hardware sample.

Founder's "First-hand Project"

In July 2021, the state introduced a "double reduction policy", and in order to cooperate with the national policy, online education companies stopped carrying out K12 education and preschool education business at the end of 2021.

Live broadcast rooms and educational hardware products can be combined to develop. To some extent, the live broadcast room plays an important task of building a new distribution system, "old trees sprout", and online education companies in the transition period have ushered in a new stage of direct sales, self-developed products and self-sold products in the world of people and goods.

The first to seek a way out was New Oriental, which opened an Oriental selection live broadcast room on Douyin and began to move the teaching scene to Douyin. In June 2022, Oriental Selection exploded out of the circle, and its operating entity is Oriental Preferred (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., which is fully controlled by New Oriental Online.

Oriental Selection currently has 6 vertical accounts, and most of the content operation team and supply chain team are derived from teachers who have not left, leaving the podium to move towards a faster-paced business world, all of whom have achieved career transformation at New Oriental.

Oriental Selection "a hit" to find a way out of the online education companies has a strong self-confidence, it is like a banner to the wind, announcing the direction of practitioners.

A report by Caitong Securities commented: "In the process of New Oriental Online's transformation, the management has a strong strategic vision, grasps the commonality between the live broadcast business and the education and training business and the company's advantageous foundation, and seizes the high prosperity opportunities of the live streaming e-commerce track and the window period for the anchor to become popular, and successfully achieves the transformation." ”

Companies seeking transformation such as homework help, ape tutoring, and learning and thinking have followed New Oriental's example and opened certified accounts on Douyin to sell a variety of educational hardware, books and other products.

According to the content ecology law of Douyin, the anchor is the core element that drives the live broadcast room to go out of the circle in a short time, and the three top anchors of Dong Minhong, Sun Xudong and Dong Yuhui are selected by Oriental, surrounded by a group of young people with high educational background, high quality, young vitality, and daring to do things, which is really a clear stream in the live broadcast industry.

For the transformed online education company, it is very important to follow the diagram, on January 6, 2023, Chen Xiangdong, the founder of Gaotu, also opened an account on Douyin and released the first short video, officially opening the road of personal branding of short video + live broadcast.

In the first live broadcast, Chen Xiangdong shared his reading experience and personal story for two consecutive hours.

According to Duozhi.com, Chen Xiangdong said in the live broadcast about the importance of the founder to a company: "It is very difficult for a company with a large size and a scale of 10,000 people like Gaotu to innovate. If the founder and CEO personally innovated, the odds would be a little greater, and the resources would be mobilized a little more, so I personally served as the project manager of Gaotu Jiapin. The best definition of corporate culture by founders is to do it so that founders can really charge and rush ahead. ”

The "number one project" is particularly important for New Oriental, Gaotu, or ape tutoring, learning and thinking, and the company's employees see that the founder posture is no longer retreating into the background, but the role of a stormtrooper.

An industry insider once commented to the Hedgehog Commune that this is extremely important for a company's road to "resurrection", and the soldiers who fought bloody battles gained a certain sense of security and determination to fight.

A new competitive atmosphere

Half of the confidence of online education companies has been restored in the Douyin live broadcast room, while the other half is still sad and immersed in the fiscal year revenue of 2022 that is not optimistic.

Among the education companies in transition, the financial report data of 6 companies, Oriental Selection, Gaotu Group, NetEase Youdao, Worry-free English, Sile Education, and Hao Future are more typical, which correspond to different segments.

In February, New Oriental Online released an interim report showing that in the first half of fiscal 2023 (referring to June 1 to November 30, 2022), revenue reached 2.08 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 262.7%, and during the reporting period, the live streaming e-commerce business was the bright spot, with GMV reaching 4.8 billion yuan. On March 9, New Oriental Online issued an announcement that it changed its name to Oriental Selection, effective from 9 a.m. on March 14.

In addition, after Oriental Selection became the company's name, it justifiably became a technology company with agricultural products as the core, and its own products, supply chain, and self-owned e-commerce platform formed the core skeleton of the new brand, supporting the growth and continuation of a brand in the alternation.

In terms of new exploration, the cultural travel industry has become the next step in the selection of the East. The social media account "Oriental Selection to See the World" is its bridgehead to the cultural tourism track, and the way of tourism + live broadcast originally only carried the function of selling goods, who would have thought that it carried Yu Minhong's ambition to see the world and do cultural tourism.

NetEase Youdao also ushered in revenue growth in the past year, and in 2022, NetEase Youdao achieved revenue of 5.01 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.8%.

The source of revenue is NetEase Youdao's three major businesses: learning services, intelligent hardware and online marketing services. The biggest highlight is the revenue of smart hardware, among which, the sales growth of new products such as Youdao Dictionary Pen X5 drove the increase in net profit. However, the net profit for the full year is still negative.

Only Gaotu Group and Sile Education achieved positive annual net profit, the former with a net profit of 13.17 million yuan, and the latter with a net profit of 54.411 million yuan. Unlike mature and stable Internet giants, they are eager to show their ability to earn money at this time, and only when they earn money can they spend it well.

The source of money is the business line, and the business layout of Gaotu Group is very representative. Online education + technology, introducing AI technology into the field of education, cooperating with Baidu's "Wen Xin Yiyan" to launch auto-generated products; Learn from Oriental selection, establish an independent brand company, open a new product live broadcast room, and move towards the field of agricultural products.

The business lines are similar, and the only thing that distinguishes the characteristics is the founder style. However, since many online education companies have a New Oriental background, "being able to speak well" has become a kind of temperament for them.

The layout of companies such as Gaotu Group, Kangyun Holdings, and Good Future shows the characteristics of scattered multi-point, horse racing mechanism, and general command, and many business lines are in a period of low-key research and development, and they can not speak out without speaking out, and even if they want to speak, it is also a small range of sharing.

At this stage, each company also has a competitive component, and the entire online education industry has also entered a situation of chaos, but the temperament presented by each company is very strange, very friendly, and very Buddhist, not you compete with me, but huddle to warm up, share their own experience, encouragement as the mainstay, killing as a supplement, very Buddhist. This atmosphere is very different from the previous fierce competition.

The coldest winter has passed, the end of the story has become a new beginning, and entrepreneurs have begun to re-express their ideals and visions of the world in the content track and hardware track, and the prologue of the era has turned a page.

This article originated from the Hedgehog Commune