日本在线英语辅导公司Langrich被收购，在线教育已成日本热潮
美国远程教育公司EnglishCentral上周早些时候宣布了对日本公司Langrich的收购。
Langrich总部位于日本东京，提供在线英语辅导一类的服务。签署换股协议后，该公司将并入EnglishCentral，其投资者 KLab Ventures以及Hitomedia 都将成为EnglishCentral的小股东。据KLab公司发言人表示，此次并购标志着第一次日本创业公司被美国同类大公司收购。
Langrich成立于2010年，通过Skype语音软件提供英语教学，授课老师均为菲律宾籍。和其主要竞争对手Rarejob以及DMM一样，Langrich提供一对一教学，并专注于会话技巧。今后，其用户还可以通过电脑或者手机观看录制好的视频课程，并配上EnglishCentral的智能化语音识别技术来学习词汇和发音。
EnglishCentral首席执行官Alan Schwartz在采访中表示：“在日本，我们还将继续使用Langrich作为我们的品牌。”
“EnglishCentral不会更改旗下公司或平台的名称，包括很多在韩国、中国以及巴西的领先的在线学习公司。”
EnglishCentral总部位于马萨诸塞州阿灵顿，每月拥有超过10万付费用户。其服务范围包含全球各地超过100个国家的400多所大学。在扎堆的远程教育领域里，EnglishCentral这家创业公司最大的亮点或许就是有退款保证了。如果学生在三个月内不能得到提升，EnglishCentral会退还全部学费。
Schwartz表示，EnglishCentral将会接手Langrich现有的包括教师在内的260名员工，同时还表示：“我们也会每个月增加几十名教师，并且我们不会再限制教师国籍，菲律宾籍之外的老师也可以考虑。”
日本的补习班（juku），也就是培训学校产业价值大约100亿美元。而英语口语课程就占据了当中很大一块市场。随着互联网的发展，智能手机的日益普及，很多这些课程被搬到了线上。
这对线下实体学校造成了很大冲击，因为对于学习者而言，在线学习更为划算，以至于目前许多实体学校已如强弩之末，而在线教育却已经成了日本最热的创业领域之一。
“2007年，日本最大的实体英语培训学校Nova破产之后，整个日本培训市场一度停滞不前，但近几年，情况有了转机。”Schwartz解释说：“Rarejob现在已经上市了，你可以看到它的财务状况，其注册用户数量增长了将近50%。DMM的增长还要快。它们是日本在线市场上，最主要的两个竞争对手。而去年，我们的收入也增长了90%。”
还有一件事进一步证实了日本在线辅导热潮的火爆，上周的亚洲科技东京舞台上，日本国内的在线教育公司Mana.bo就拿下了特等奖。
Japanese edtech startup acquired by US startup amid online tutoring boom
American edtech startup EnglishCentral earlier this week announced the acquisition of a Japanese startup offering similar online tutoring for English learners. Langrich will be acquired in a share-swap agreement that sees the Tokyo-based startup’s investors – KLab Ventures and Hitomedia – become minority shareholders in EnglishCentral. According to a KLab spokesperson, it marks the first time that a Japanese startup has been acquired by a larger American one.
Founded in 2010, Langrich uses English tutors in the Philippines to provide English instruction via Skype. Like its main competitors, Rarejob and DMM, lessons are one-on-one and focus on conversation skills. Langrich users will now benefit from a video lesson archive for web and mobile, as well as EnglishCentral’s speech recognition technology for studying vocabulary and pronunciation.
“We will keep the Langrich brand as our consumer brand in Japan,” Alan Schwartz, EnglishCentral’s CEO, tells Tech in Asia. “EnglishCentral will remain the name of the company and the name of the platform that we provide to our global partners, including many leading online learning companies […] in Korea, China, and Brazil.”
EnglishCentral, headquartered in Arlington, Massachusetts, boasts more than 100,000 paying users per month. The service is available in more than 100 countries and at over 400 universities across the globe. Perhaps EnglishCentral’s biggest differentiator in the crowded edtech space is its money-back guarantee – the startup refunds 100 percent of a student’s lesson fees if they don’t level up after three months.
Schwartz says that EnglishCentral will retail all of Langrich’s current employees – a total of 260 including teachers. “We’re also adding dozens of teachers a month, and we will not limit teacher hiring to the Philippines going forward,” he adds.
The Japanese juku – cram school – industry is valued at roughly US$10 billion.Eikaiwa – conversational English lessons – take a big chunk of that market. With strong internet infrastructure and a population that’s increasingly fond of smartphones, many of those lessons are moving online. That could hurt brick-and-mortar schools, which have already faltered, since online learning is more cost effective for learners. This shift to online has created, arguably, one of Japan’s hottest startup verticals.
“After the Nova implosion (once Japan’s largest physical English conversation school, Nova went bankrupt in 2007), the whole market in Japan stalled, but things have changed in last several years,” Schwartz explains. “Rarejob is now public and you can see from their financials they are growing at close to 50 percent in terms of registered users. DMM we believe is growing even faster. They are the main competitors in the online market in Japan that have traction. We grew 90 percent last year in terms of revenue.”
Further evidence of Japan’s online tutoring boom could be seen at Tech in Asia Tokyo’s Arena pitch battle last week, where domestic edtech startup Mana.bo took the grand prize.
Editing by Terence Lee
Source:techinasia
日本招聘巨头Recruit 3900万美元收购教育科技创业公司Quipper
Quipper是一家教育科技创业公司，总部位于伦敦，其分部涵盖包括印度尼西亚和泰国在内的9个国家，它为全球150万多名学生和150000名教师提供教育支持与帮助。
日前，日本招聘巨头Recruit以3900万美元收购了Quipper，至此，2015年亚洲的教育科技类公司的交易量持续增长。此次收购是一项战略性举措，使Recruit的教育水平直线上升，并扩大了其k – 12产品在全球的销售渠道。
Quipper，2010年在英国建立，它最初是通过Quipper Quiz手机移动端平台帮助初学者学习语言和数学的。随后，2014年，Quipper推出了Quipper School以及在线学习平台的k – 12，此平台的教学内容与政府认可课程同步。
Quipper School首先在菲律宾创建，之后扩展到了包括印度尼西亚、泰国和墨西哥在内的九个国家，现在，它为全球150万多名学生和150000名教师提供教育支持与帮助。
2012年，Recruit因收购全球最大的工作招聘网站Indeed.com而闻名。Recruit一直对教育行业兴趣浓厚，它们也通过两个系统提供教育服务，一个是Benkyo Sapuri（课外辅导），另一个Juken Sapuri(高考辅导)为高考生提供学习辅导。
目前，Juken Sapuri以学习精要高质量数字点播的方式，及较低的月订阅费（平均每月10每月）赢得了市场，打破了原有100亿美元考试产业的垄断。此次收购为它们迅速扩张的k – 12的用户群和准备学生们后阶段的高考建立了联系。
“Recruit以商业领域的“破坏者”和创新者而闻名，它们对如何在科技教育领域发挥作用很在行。最重要的是，我们两个企业对未来抱有共同的愿景。”Quipper的首席执行官Masayuki Watanabe说到。
Quipper 和Recruit 在教育服务领域有一个共同的理念，正如它们当前的策略一样，强调以低价格提供高质量的服务。Recruit知道如何发展技术并使Quipper的资本增值。Recruit战略突出，在过去的18个月里，它们仅在亚洲的员工就从2名增加到了60名。
“作为一个创业公司，Quipper灵活应变，应对了诸多挑战，但它也存在局限性。Recruit大量优质的业务资源无疑会加速我们公司的成长,”Quipper的营销总监Takuya Homma说到。
随着电子教育平台的迅速崛起，其他类似的教育平台，如美国的Edmodo，近年来也筹集了很多资金以实现转型。在数字化方面，教育部门明显落后于其他行业，但现如今，主导的出版商不断寻求学习和教育的数字化发展，该情况得到了改善。
数字化的缓慢应用不仅为创业公司提供了机会，也为非传统企业进入教育平台和空间提供了机会，正如马来西亚的企业巨头YTL集团。通过与国家教育部(MoE)的直接合作，YTL发展了Frog Education，一个虚拟学习平台 (VLE) ,为马来西亚10000多所学校提供教育服务。
与Edmodo还有 Frog Education一样，Quipper School 通过云平台来下发作业来简化老师的备课和评估工作，发挥了巨大的作用。
游戏化的教学元素、对学生详尽的分析、与各国国家教育部同步的课程，以及当地的相关教材和老师，使Quipper 在新兴市场处于十分有利位置。
Japan’s Recruit Holdings buys edtech startup Quipper for US$39M
Edtech dealflow across Asia continues to increase in 2015 as edtech startup Quipper has just been acquired by Japan-based Recruit Holdings for US$39 million. The acquisition appears to be a strategic move that will enable Recruit’s education vertical to enhance and expand their K-12 products globally.
Founded in the UK in 2010, Quipper began with Quipper Quiz, a mobile-based quiz platform that helped learners to primarily study language and math subjects. The company then pivoted in 2014 with the launch of Quipper School, an online learning platform for the K-12 segment that features content aligned with government-approved curriculum.
Initially launched in the Philippines, Quipper School has since expanded to nine countries including Indonesia, Thailand and Mexico and now serves over 1.5 million students and 150,000 teachers.
Known for their acquisition of the world’s largest job recruitment website Indeed.com in 2012, Recruit has a strong interest in the education vertical as they also provide educational services through Benkyo Sapuri (Japanese for “study supplement”), and grade 12 university entrance exam test prep Juken Sapuri (Japanese for “entrance exam supplement”).
Juken Sapuri is currently disrupting the US$10 billion exam prep industry in Japan with quality digital on-demand content and low monthly subscription fees that are considerably cheaper than other test prep alternatives at an average cost of US$10 per month. The acquisition appears to be an attempt to provide a link between a rapidly expanding K-12 user base and their eventual need for university test prep at the later phase of secondary education.
“Recruit is famous for being a disrupter and innovator of business and has a lot of know-how on this edtech business domain as well. And above all, we share the same vision,” said Quipper’s CEO Masayuki Watanabe.
Quipper and Recruit appear to share a common approach in providing educational services as their current strategy is backed by an emphasis on relevant high-quality content at lower price points.
Recruit’s business development know-how and capital will add value to Quipper’s current capacity and strategy which has undergone a growth spurt of two employees to 60 in Asia alone over the past 18 months.
“As a startup, Quipper could be agile and make a lot of trials flexibly but there was a limit to it. With Recruit’s substantial and excellent business assets we can now surely accelerate our growth,” said Takuya Homma, Marketing Director at Quipper.
Similar education platforms such as US-based Edmodo have also raised considerable funding in recent years as the steady switch to educational digital content begins to gain more momentum. The education sector has lagged behind other sectors in digital adoption as the dominant publishers position themselves for a new era of learning and education itself becomes redefined.
The slow adoption to digital has provided opportunities for not only startups but also non-traditional players to enter the educational platform and content space as is the case with Malaysia’s corporate giant YTL Group. In direct cooperation with the national Ministry of Education (MoE) YTL has helped to develop Frog Education, a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) that provides content and communication services to over 10,000 schools in Malaysia.
Similar to Edmodo and Frog Education, Quipper School creates value by minimising teacher preparation and grading time by providing them with an easy to use cloud platform to create and distribute homework online.
High student retention rates as a result of gamified elements, more detailed data and analysis for each student, and curriculum directly aligned with MoE standards for each country in addition to local teacher input for localisation and content relevancy has put Quipper in a strong position to engage new markets.
The author is the Co-founder and Managing Director of EdTech Asia, a consultancy, information and research hub that fosters a community of education and technology enthusiasts.
Source:e27
原文链接：http://e27.co/japans-recruit-holdings-buys-edtech-startup-quipper-us39m-20150705/
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