Zuoyebang raises $750 million in Series E round led by Tiger Global and FountainVest

Zuoyebang, a Beijing-based online learning company serving school-age students, announced on June 29, 2020 that it had raised $750 million in a Series E financing round. The company disclosed the round in a post on its WeChat account.

The round was led by the US investment firm Tiger Global and the Hong Kong-based private equity firm FountainVest Partners. Existing backers, including SoftBank's Vision Fund, Sequoia Capital China, Xiang He Capital and the Qatar Investment Authority, also took part. According to TechCrunch, the new money brought the total raised by the company to $1.33 billion. Reuters had reported earlier in the month that the round could value the business at $6.5 billion.

Zuoyebang was set up inside the search company Baidu in 2015 and was spun off as an independent startup a year later. At the time of the round, its app let students photograph a homework problem and receive a solution, and the company also offered online courses and live lessons. It reported 170 million monthly active users, about 50 million of whom used the service daily, and more than 12 million paying subscribers. TechCrunch noted that rival Yuanfudao had raised $1 billion in a round led by Tencent and Hillhouse Capital at a valuation of $7.8 billion, and cited a projection that China's online education market would reach $81 billion within two years.