Job market challenges continue to mount.

The newcomers who are about to leave the campus are facing unprecedented competitive pressure. In the coming 2022 graduation season, college graduates will exceed 10 million for the first time, reaching 10.76 million. This means that in the school recruitment market, these newcomers will face unprecedented job competition. At the same time, companies in the new economy industry led by the Internet have repeatedly reported large layoffs of fresh graduates. According to the national urban unemployment rate survey in 2021, the unemployment rate of young people aged 16-24, mainly fresh graduates entering the workplace, is as high as 14.3%.

Workers who have been tempered for a long time have begun to worry about the arrival of the "35-year-old crisis". In recent years, as the global economic growth slows down and the homogeneous labor force continues to increase, the domestic talent market has begun to tacitly push out groups who have been employed in the workplace for more than ten years. People who are still looking for jobs in the market at the age of 35 are anxiously worried about the mid-life crisis, company layoffs and unemployment problems.

On the other hand, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's "New Occupation Online Learning Platform Development Report" shows that there is a shortage of nearly 10 million new occupational talents in the market. Workers need to learn and master these new skills in order to be competent in relevant positions.

In the second half of 2021, the government will successively release opinion documents to support market-oriented cooperation and implementation in vocational education, skills training and other directions.

In the State Council executive meeting, the State Council reviewed and approved the "14th Five-Year Plan" vocational skills training plan to accelerate the training of high-quality laborers and technical and skilled personnel. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, we must adhere to the employment orientation, adapt to market demand, and promote the expansion and improvement of vocational skills training.

One of the most important guidance for marketization is the "Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of Modern Vocational Education" issued by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council. The opinion mentioned: Encourage listed companies and industry leading enterprises to hold vocational education, and encourage all kinds of enterprises to participate in vocational education in accordance with the law. Encourage vocational schools to cooperate with social capital to build vocational education infrastructure, training bases, and jointly build and share public training bases.

Based on the needs of C-end professionals and B-end companies seeking new talents, as well as the official support for market-oriented enterprise participation, it can be expected that in 2022 and beyond, education and training companies and talent service providers directly related to employment skills will welcome good opportunities to continue.

In this expanding market, a number of domestic companies have already landed, providing skills training, enterprise digital transformation and other services for workplace employees and corporate employees. They will push the entire market forward. Who are the market players to watch this year, and how are their products and progress? Let us look forward to the 2022 "Adult Learning Venture Capital Market: Employment Skills Oriented, Market Expansion Favorable", as follows:

1. Employment orientation: Emerging skills and talent upgrading in traditional industries

Judging from the current map of leading companies for adults and corporate employees, education and training companies in emerging skills such as digitalization are undoubtedly ahead of all categories. We have shared a series of companies before: including Coursera, Udemy, which went public last year, Multiverse, Scaler Academy, etc., whose valuation is close to unicorn. In the global wave of digitalization, the Chinese and American markets have similar needs for emerging skilled talents. Domestic education and training companies in this direction will also move towards a more mature stage. The new generation of leading companies in this direction include:

three classes

The new occupation and digital skills education company has three courses, and in the second half of 2021, it will complete the B+ round and the C round of financing of over 200 million yuan. At that time, the company had transformed into a digital talent service provider mainly for enterprises.

At present, it can be seen from the official website that the company's business covers enterprises and individual users. For individual users, it provides new vocational skills courses aimed at career development, including IT, new business, management, etc.; for corporate customers, it provides digital talent system and Business Development Solutions.

In addition, the Edu guide learned that the company currently also provides a one-stop intelligent learning platform that supports personalized learning paths and visual learning analysis. Judging from the course categories and intelligent learning tools provided, the three-course company is expanding in the direction of the US version of Udemy+Degreed, and this year's progress deserves attention.

Nai Learning Education

Naixue Education, an IT talent professional ability improvement company, announced in September last year that it had completed its A1 round of financing of 50 million yuan. As a start-up company that has only been established for 2 years, it is undoubtedly a rising star worthy of attention in the field of new vocational skills. Naixue Education Co., Ltd. focuses on high-level skills training in the IT category. The current product pricing gradient ranges from tens of thousands to thousands of yuan. In the last round of financing, the company planned to use the new funds for C-end course product development and B-end business expansion. The Edu guide learned that the company's business has expanded from the C-side business when it started to the B-side. This expansion path is also the mainstream path for new vocational skills education companies at home and abroad.

Leetcode buckle

In the form of online tools, Leetcode, which provides programming job-seeking skills improvement products, announced last year that it had completed nearly 10 million US dollars in Series A financing. The company has entered China since 2018 and operates independently.

Leetcode deducts the company's massive technical interview resources and programming skills topics, and has already exerted influence on the domestic programmer group. After obtaining relatively high investment from tool companies, the next step is to continue to expand ToB talent services or expand to skills training, which is a direction worthy of attention this year.

Geekbang

Founded in 2007, Geekbang Technology Co., Ltd. provides IT conferences, knowledge payment and professional skills training. Last year, it announced the completion of 70 million yuan in Series B financing.

Its Geek Time is a paid product for IT skills and knowledge launched in 2017. The current course category has been expanded to a wider range of business, humanities and personal growth. As a company that has accumulated a large number of IT technology companies and users through IT technology conferences in the early days, ToB skills training resources have relatively advantages.

Dawa Technology

In 2020, Dawa Technology announced the completion of a strategic financing of RMB 120 million. The company's business includes: e-commerce training, e-commerce operation, e-commerce software development and short video live broadcast e-commerce. Its subsidiary Huoyan Club is a knowledge platform focusing on live broadcast e-commerce training and IP incubation.

During the epidemic period, the number of e-commerce users has increased, and the social e-commerce on the supply side has exerted efforts and new traffic support, which has increased the demand for e-commerce operation skills training by merchants and individual creators. Training providers such as Huoyan Club will usher in favorable opportunities, and at the same time, more similar service providers will continue to increase.

Traditional industry skills upgrade

In addition to the progress and focus of emerging skill training service providers, traditional industry practitioners are also seeking to improve their skills and maintain competitiveness.

Education and training service providers that provide skills improvement services in the medical field are one of the most focused directions of capital last year. Good Medical Technology, established in 2016, initially started from the field of orthopaedics to explore teaching methods for improving the skills of doctors, and later expanded a single department to multiple departments such as cardiovascular and oral cavity. In 2021, it received an investment of nearly 50 million yuan. At that time, it had served more than 400,000 in-service doctors in 4 departments. The new funds will be used for teaching research and development, technology expansion and base construction.

"Medical skills need to be highly professional, and practitioners' improvement is mainly within the system. Whether market-oriented services can be used as participants" has been a question raised in the past ten years. At present, with the introduction of professional talents from market service providers, previous questions have been answered. Given that the supply side of this direction is still relatively early, it is worth paying attention to whether early explorers such as good medical skills will encounter bottlenecks before entering the next stage, and whether new entrants will be more abundant.

Similar to medical care, more traditional vertical industry enterprises such as retail, health care, food, construction, real estate, manufacturing, etc., the demand for iterative improvement of talents' professional skills will provide more possibilities for the market supply side.

2. Enterprise digital training tools

If a worker wants to do a good job, he must first sharpen his tools. For enterprise digital transformation and talent upgrading, in addition to skills education and training, the application of digital tools is important. Correspondingly, a number of companies providing online learning tools for enterprises received high investment last year, and the new funds will help these companies expand the scale of revenue in 2022.

UMU

UMU, which provides an interactive learning platform for enterprises, was one of the companies that received the most capital attention for enterprise learning tools last year. The company has completed 6 rounds of financing in more than a year, and received hundreds of millions of yuan in the C3 round last year. The financing amount is not inferior to that of emerging skills training service providers. This is similar to the current capital attention of overseas top companies: emerging skills training companies for individuals and enterprises, and digital SaaS tool companies for enterprises and individuals, the heads of the capital have been invested in the same amount, and all of them have entered unicorns volume.

In the early days of UMU's establishment, it was because of the low level of digitization in corporate training and other fields. The company hopes to improve the learning experience and efficiency of corporate employees through the intelligent teaching evaluation and training process. In the data disclosed by the company last year, the company's revenue maintained a 100% growth year by year, and more than 60% of its revenue came from overseas.

Cool Academy

Cool Academy, a subsidiary of Kuxuan Technology, initially started with an enterprise intelligent learning platform, and announced the completion of hundreds of millions of yuan in Series B financing in 2021. At present, the company has gradually expanded to digital management platform and digital talent development platform business.

Cloud School

Yunxuetang currently provides digital enterprise learning solution services for enterprises, including: software SaaS services, content, enterprise learning operation services, etc. The company completed a $190 million Series E financing last year.

The skill needs of employees of enterprises are diversified, but the use of online learning tools is more versatile. Therefore, when UMU-type learning interactive tools are introduced to the market, compared with skills training, they have a broad base of enterprise users. Overseas corporate training SaaS service providers have already entered the unicorn size in 2021. This year, the progress of domestic capital investment in this field is worthy of attention.

3. Transformation of large companies: increase the layout of skills education business

Since the second half of 2021, there will be many education and training companies and Internet giants in the secondary market that will increase their layout or transition to adult learning. How these businesses are doing this year cannot be ignored, especially for companies in transition.

high way

As early as April 2021, Gaotu announced that it would change its adult education segment business “Learn From” to “Gaotu College”, and then to “Gaotu Online”. Gaotu's online courses cover language training, college students' examinations, finance and economics, public examinations, teaching resources, study abroad, management, medical care and other types of vocational education business.

After the double reduction, Gaotu is the company with the largest investment in adult learning among all the original K12 head companies. "Currently, the company's transformation focuses on adult training, providing language training, college student exams, finance, public service and qualification exams."

In the first financial report after the double reduction last September, founder Chen Xiangdong said that in the field of adult education, Gaotu will continue to expand investment in existing education sectors including financial certificates and public service exams, while exploring more adults. Education combination, such as postgraduate entrance examination and study abroad preparation. "Our goal is to create a diverse, multi-segment adult education matrix."

Before the double reduction, Gaotu's k12 courses contributed more than 90% of the company's revenue. In 2021, after many institutional short-selling and double reduction and transformation, its market value has dropped from the peak of 10 billion US dollars to less than 600 million US dollars (as of before the article was published).

The current teaching and training products for adults have become the company's focus, and the business performance in this direction in 2022 is also the most important.

ByteDance

ByteDance's vigorous education has experienced ups and downs, and the adult learning brand is mainly based on English learning apps. Although the newly adjusted business map of Vigor Education covers four major areas including adult education, there is no confirmed new brand launch so far. Instead, it is the giant engine of ByteDance's marketing service brand, which launched the e-commerce live broadcast operation training platform giant learning to provide ecological practitioners with learning support such as short video marketing.

The Edu Guide has learned that the current Mass Learning platform courses cover training courses such as short video operation, short video marketing and promotion, e-commerce live broadcast operation, e-commerce live broadcast delivery skills, and advertising marketing promotion. As a training brand serving its own ecological platforms such as Douyin, the platform is positioned more like the Taobao merchant education business under Taobao E-commerce. How will the platform help the huge number of engines and the Douyin ecosystem, and will it increase investment this year?

In addition, as a company that advocates efficiency tools, after readjusting the education business, ByteDance or its vigorous education does not rule out entering the field of enterprise learning SaaS tools and becoming the "new enemy" of the leading companies in enterprise learning and training tools.

New Oriental

After the “Double Reduction”, New Oriental, which started out in the training of college students studying abroad, announced that it will comprehensively upgrade the existing CET-4, postgraduate entrance examination, overseas examinations, teaching resources, and accounting programs. In the future, it will expand training services such as computer grade examinations and judicial examinations . The business in this direction will be another important focus of the New Oriental agricultural product e-commerce platform "New Oriental Selection" and the literacy business.

NetEase Youdao

NetEase Youdao announced the establishment of "Youdao Adult Education Division" in the first half of last year, and upgraded the "NetEase Cloud Classroom" brand. Youdao Adult Education Division has integrated the services and teams of Youdao Premium Courses Adult Section, NetEase Cloud Classroom, China University MOOC, etc., and concentrated resources on the research and development of adult courses. Cloud Classroom".

In addition, according to Youdao's latest financial report, adult learning/vocational education has become one of the company's four major businesses (the other three main businesses are: intelligent hardware, quality education, and education informatization).

Not only are Youdao’s internal bets on adult learning increasing, but external investments are also being made. In January 2022, Youdao invested in ZhiyiTime, an online vocational education company. Edu Guide learned that the company's brand knowledge group, the main business is new vocational skills training, the current platform courses include product manager, design, operation, etc., the price ranges from several thousand yuan.

It can be predicted that in the next year, Youdao will continue to increase the investment and promotion of adult learning and other businesses.

good future

TAL will launch the Qingzhou brand in the second half of 2021. This business integrates its sub-brands of Qingzhou Postgraduate Exam Help, Qingzhou Full Score, and Qingzhou Study Abroad. Compared with all the above-mentioned training and tool companies that focus on skill improvement, the brand of TAL focuses more on providing young people with training and improvement services for college entrance examinations.

Judging from the business advantages of the company since its establishment 18 years ago, the investment direction of the brand can be said to be reasonable. If it wants to seek new growth points and possibilities, the company may next consider the skill education category that it was relatively unfamiliar with or good at.

In the current period when there are many problems in the employment of talents and the gap of talents in enterprises is growing, the improvement of emerging skills and other abilities to obtain employment, the digital transformation of enterprises and the upgrading of talents to improve competitiveness, in our opinion, are the most important goals in the current adult learning market. This is also the direction we hope to see the supply side of the domestic market continue to provide high-quality solutions. As outlined above, there are more and more participants providing services in this direction, and large companies are gradually increasing their investment. It can be expected that the entire market will take a step forward in the next year.

The above is all the content of this sharing.

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