Zuoyebang

EdtechChina

New to Unitard

✂️ Markdown

🦄
Became a unicorn
2018
📈
Peak valuation
$10 Billion ’21
💔
Became a Unitard
2021
💸
Last valuation
—

Current status

Core K-12 tutoring business banned by the July 2021 crackdown; cut tens of thousands of jobs and pivoted away from for-profit tutoring.

The rise & fall

7 moments · 2015–2022

The key moments.

2015

Spun out of Baidu

A homework-help app — 'zuoyebang' means homework helper — becomes an independent company and adds live K-12 classes.

SCMP

2018

Joins the unicorn club

A mega-round in China's online-tutoring arms race lifts it past $1B, running neck-and-neck with Yuanfudao.

TechCrunch

Dec 2020

A $2.35B war-chest round

Tiger Global, Alibaba and SoftBank pile into a Series E as pandemic demand for online classes explodes.

TechNode

2021

The peak: reportedly ~$10B$10B

On the back of the Series E it enters 2021 as one of the world's most valuable edtech startups.

SCMP

Jul 2021

Regulated out of the club

Beijing's 'double reduction' policy bans for-profit tutoring in core school subjects — Zuoyebang's main business — and bars such firms from raising capital or going public.

SCMP

2021

Tens of thousands of jobs cut

Regional centers shutter and mass layoffs sweep the company and its peers as the sector deflates.

SCMP

How it happened

Zuoyebang ('homework helper') was one of China's two largest online-tutoring unicorns alongside Yuanfudao, offering live K-12 classes and a homework-help app, and was reportedly valued around $10B after raising a $2.35B round in late 2020 from Tiger Global, Alibaba and SoftBank.

China's July 2021 'double reduction' policy banned for-profit tutoring in core school subjects — the company's main business — and barred such firms from raising capital or going public. Zuoyebang shuttered regional centers, cut tens of thousands of jobs alongside its peers, and saw its sky-high valuation collapse as the entire sector was regulated into a different shape.

Source: TechNode / Class Central / SCMP (reportedly valued ~$10B after a $2.35B Series E Dec 2020 backed by Tiger Global, Alibaba, SoftBank; July 2021 'double reduction' crackdown banned for-profit core-subject tutoring; mass layoffs across the sector)