Zuoyebang

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.