Kaikela Raises 600 Million RMB in Series B1 Funding to Accelerate Upgrades in Online Vocational Education
Kaikeba — making careers more flexible.
Kaikelaibai recently announced the completion of a 600 million yuan Series B1 funding round. In August 2020, Gaorong Ventures invested in Kaikelaibai's Series A round, and participated again in this round. The funding will be primarily used for teaching and curriculum development, product technology development, offline scenario construction, and organizational development.
Additionally, Kaikelaibai announced a dual upgrade of its business and brand. The upgraded Kaikelaibai is positioned as "online vocational education" and will commit itself to more diversified vocational education and talent services, helping users achieve sustainable growth and workplace freedom.
As the 14th Five-Year Plan gets underway, China's talent resource allocation is shifting to adapt to economic restructuring. The country's vocational education is transitioning from the industrial era's "supply-driven education" to the internet era's "talent-driven education." According to the 2020 China Education and Training Industry Report, China's vocational education and training market reached 268.9 billion yuan in 2019, up 13.3% year-over-year, and is expected to hit 400 billion yuan by 2022. With the普及 of online education, the sector is projected to maintain annual growth of around 20%, and online vocational education is entering a "golden period" of development. Kaikelaibai is the online education platform for digital talent under Huikedu Group. It officially launched in August 2013 and independently raised its Series A round in 2020. Gaorong Ventures first invested in Huikedu Group back in 2014. With eight years of development, Kaikelaibai has deep roots in vocational education. From content construction to model exploration, its robust middle-office capabilities ensure rational allocation of quality resources. Building on deep market insights, it has optimized and expanded its course offerings, continuously launching new categories to build "lifelong learning" online vocational education and open up freely chosen career advancement paths for users.
In an internal letter to employees, Kaikelaibai founder and CEO Dr. Yechang Fang stated that over the past year, the team has grown from over 1,000 to more than 3,500 people, with revenue in the first half of 2021 increasing approximately 3.5x year-over-year. Kaikelaibai's digital talent cultivation business (DTG) has gradually built a vocational skills training system covering the three core disciplines of technology, business, and design. It has become the earliest-founded, largest-scale, and most influential pan-IT internet and digital talent online vocational education platform in China, with a cumulative repurchase rate of 50% within one year. In Q2 2021, Kaikelaibai successfully incubated and scaled its exam training business (ETG), covering graduate studies, civil service exams, professional certifications, and academic credential advancement. The ETG team has already surpassed 1,000 people, achieving over 10 million yuan in revenue in its first month and doubling revenue for three consecutive months. Additionally, the enterprise services business (ESU), incubated in the first half of 2020, has also grown rapidly. To date, it has built comprehensive enterprise services focused on digital transformation talent and organizational solutions, covering major industries including finance, consumer goods, energy, transportation, and education, with revenue exceeding 20 million yuan in June 2021. Fang noted: "Vocational education has social and livelihood attributes. At its core, it is the central means of talent structure adjustment amid national economic transformation." Going forward, vocational education will become a "required course" for social development, cultivating new diversified talent for building a modern society, meeting economic development needs, and achieving the dual goals of talent advancement and social progress.
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