ByteDance, the parent company of short video platform TikTok, announced that it has launched the edtech brand Dali Education.
Photo credit: ByteDance
The new brand will undertake all of ByteDance’s education businesses, with Chen Lin serving as its CEO. He previously worked as the CEO of Jinri Toutiao, the news and information content platform of ByteDance in China.
To date, Dali has 10,000 employees, according to Chen.
ByteDance entered the education technology sector in 2016 by making investments in edtech startups and launching different products. In March, its global CEO Yiming Zhang mentioned in a letter commemorating the company’s eighth anniversary that education will be his new key area of focus.
Additionally, the new edtech brand has also released its first educational hardware product. The Dali Smart Lamp comes equipped with an AI-based camera that allows parents to tutor their kids remotely through video calls. The product is already available on ecommerce sites, with the price ranging from 799 yuan to 1,099 yuan (US$119.6 to US$164.5).
“Our exploration of the education industry is still in the early stages […] We’ve been thinking about the education business for some time, and the brand independence of Dali Education is just the beginning of a long journey in the industry,” said Zhang in a statement.
China’s online education market was forecasted to reach 315 billion yuan (US$47.1 billion) by 2020, according to Statista. Some major local players in the space include Yuanfudao, which is valued at US$15.5 billion, and the Baidu-backed Zuoyebang, which raised US$750 million in a series E round led by FountainVest Partners and Tiger Global Management in June this year.
Currency converted from Chinese yuan to US dollar: US$1 = 6.68 yuan.
