New Oriental

New Oriental is one of China's two education giants with a market cap exceeding $10 billion, founded in 1993 and built initially on TOEFL and GRE test prep for elite students, per a 2017 FreeS Fund analysis . The company pioneered a then-novel practice of having students rate teachers when courses reached 80% completion, with those scores directly determining 25% of a teacher's income and future class assignments — a mechanism that helped transform teaching into a service profession in China . Former New Oriental executives went on to found major edtech firms: Larry Chen, who rose from teacher to executive president during his 14 years at New Oriental, left in 2014 to launch Gaotu Techedu (then Gaotu/Genshuixue), which listed on the NYSE in 2019 . In the industry's evolution from offline to online to AI-driven education, New Oriental represents the foundational offline era that began in 1993 .