20 15, homework help started to operate independently from Baidu. After that, homework help completed a financing almost every year. Now it has become the largest online education platform of K 12 in China. Its homework help Super APP is the only educational APP with a monthly life of over 100 million in China, with over 800 million activated user devices, which has a significant advantage in online education traffic.
Five years have passed. Looking back on all the roads he has traveled since he started his business, Hou Jianbin, founder and CEO of homework help, feels "very happy" and has a deeper understanding of the online education industry.
The strong demand in the fields of 1 and K 12 contributed to homework help.
In fact, the origin of homework help should be earlier than 20 15, which is called "the year of innovation in education industry".
This year, Hou Jianbin, who is still the head of Baidu's knowledge system, and his colleagues found that the number of questions in the K 12 field actually accounted for 10% of the total search questions. This ratio made them aware of the strong demand hidden in the field of K 12, which became a preliminary idea for the establishment of homework help.
20 14 1 month, homework help was officially launched. At that time, it was at the peak of K 12 question bank, and homework help keenly captured this new opportunity and entered the image search market by virtue of Baidu's technical advantages. As a result, photo search products were well received by users and recognized by the market, and later became one of the core products of homework help, with a market share of over 75%.
On June 20 15, homework help was spun off from Baidu, and homework help APP trader Hou Jianbin was appointed as CEO. Homework help became an independent company to participate in the market competition, and officially started its K 12 online education giant road.
2. In addition to the essence of education, the core is technology.
20 15 1 1 homework help launched the real-time Q&A service, which started the first step from tools to services. This has brought dividend precipitation between users and traffic pools to homework help.
At the end of 20 15, homework help started the live class business, and established its own traffic pool with the help of users who took photos to search questions and answer questions, which greatly reduced the cost of obtaining customers.
Today, homework help has formed a product matrix such as picture search, live classroom broadcast, oral arithmetic correction, exercises, homework help VIP, learning gadgets, etc. The products and services provided cover all aspects of teaching, learning, examination, practice and evaluation.
Hou Jianbin planned the closed-loop design of the industrial chain from the beginning. Realizing the self-delivery of the whole industrial chain means that all links need technical input. It can even be said that besides the essence of education, the core of a science and technology education company is technology and data.
To this end, homework help has established a system of teaching research, teaching and customer acquisition. At the same time, a production management system is established to store the data of each system. Taking the teaching and research system as an example, homework help set up its own teaching and research system on 20 18, trying to make the teaching and research process online. Although this process is not easy, the final effect is very good. "In the past, it took a teacher half a year to make a handout from beginning to end, but now it takes only one month or even less."
During the Spring Festival this year, homework help launched a free live class. In five weeks, the total number of people exceeded 33 million, and there was no system crash during the live broadcast. In this regard, Hou Jianbin said, "The fact that the system does not collapse is only an appearance, and the essence reflects the internal strength of R&D."
3.K 12 online education has entered a white-hot stage.
In 20 18, online tutoring institutions flooded into the field of online live broadcast, and the war of K 12 began to burn. Since the beginning of this year, online education has started sturm und drang mode.
According to Chen, co-founder of homework help, the competition in the education industry is no longer the competition among peers, but the competition of the whole industry. "online k 12 has entered a white-hot stage, and the protracted war of k 12 will take two or three years or even more. Capital is still pouring in and the situation will change at any time. "
How to deal with this situation? Hou Jianbin believes that the ultimate operation of the education industry is to strive for quality and efficiency, or to say, the operational efficiency above a certain quality condition. "The best lever to improve efficiency is technology."
In retrospect, Hou Jianbin said that his biggest feeling in these years was that he was "very happy" when he changed from a pure Internet person to an educator. "The education industry is very happy, there is no industry, only you can't. The industry is big but difficult, but as long as it is done well, there is actually an opportunity. "