E-base Education Group, an English-language education company headquartered in Hebei province of China, has experienced tremendous growth since it launched its Chinese Language Learning Program two years ago. According to the 2021 financial report of E-base, E-base Education Group’s total revenue increased by 54%, and the income on board accounts for 60% of total revenue due to global purchases of Chinese Language Learning Program have grown by 400%.
Founded in 2002 by Tao Zhang, E-base Education Group is a premier provider of K-12 English education for students all over the world, on a mission to “open a window for the children to communicate with the world.” Its courses range from preschool basics to early college English language education and Mandarin Chinese language education. E-base has delivered hundreds of professional courses over the past decades and serves learners in more than 20 countries. As of now, E-base Education Group has trained more than 180,000 students, provided more than 500 jobs, and has opened 18 branch campuses in 10 third-and fourth-tier cities in China.
“We’re excited to use the technology platform we developed to reach new language learners to teach the popular language globally, Mandarin Chinese,” said Yuan Zhao, COO of E-base Education Group. “The synergy between the teaching concepts and methods we’ve developed will make it easier for Chinese language learners across the globe.” Yuan Zhao has been the driving force behind the company’s growth and expansion. Since Yuan Zhao joined E-base in 2011, she has become one of the most influential leaders within E-base Education Group. Yuan Zhao has created the E-base app, an online learning platform and a series of international courses for E-base and promoted the connection of teachers with students through videos and monitor tools. Since March 2018, she has been serving as the Company’s COO. In 2020, China Business Daily named Yuan Zhao in its annual list of the Top Ten most influential people in China’s business world. In 2021, Chinese Academy of Management Science Academic awarded Yuan Zhao the “2021 Outstanding Management Award”.
In 2021, the Chinese government passed the so-called “Double Reduction” policy, which has become an accelerator for E-base to develop Chinese language education Program. A positive factor is that the “wave of layoffs” of K12 education companies has reduced the cost of recruiting Chinese teachers. According to the “Blue Book of Overseas Chinese”, there are more than 60 million Chinese living overseas in more than 160 countries and regions on all continents. With China’s economic development and globalization, more and more people are interested in learning Chinese than before.
The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the closure of schools, affecting over 1.2 billion children in 186 countries. Since February 2020, when the Chinese government ordered a quarter of a billion full-time students to continue their studies through online platforms, Tencent Classroom has been extensively used. Yuan Zhao made the decision to cooperate with Tencent Interactive Whiteboard to implement multi-person online whiteboard interactive services, including interactive graffiti, real-time trajectory synchronization, document sharing, real synchronous recording and playback of whiteboard and audio and video, etc. This technological innovation has removed the barriers of information transmission between teachers and students in online teaching, and significantly improved the quality of teaching.
Additionally, E-base App online learning platforms began offering free access for some of their services in response to high demand. E-base has experienced a 150 percent increase in the number of new students using E-base app after launching free live classes.
E-base Learning Solutions provides overseas Chinese learners with standard-compliant curriculum, and teacher-led teaching. Yuan Zhao developed and implemented a diversified curriculum system, integrating the traditional Chinese culture learning into daily teaching activities, so that children overseas can understand the charm of Chinese culture in an entertaining and engaging way. Compared with the traditional learning method, E-base Learning Solutions is especially suitable for K-9 children. Yuan Zhao stated that “When confronting the enormous international market, we should first pay attention to overseas Chinese families with similar cultural backgrounds and language habits, we plan to introduce and market our online courses to more than 70 countries.”
In addition, E-base has also leveraged Zoom Video Communications and Tencent Meeting technology to bring E-base customers more stable classroom experiences with enhanced video and audio communications. Zoom provides the global video technology infrastructure for E-base to build its classrooms on.
“While we started virtual learning to meet students’ need education need coming out of the pandemic, we look forward to continuing to offer this innovative learning option for students,” said Mrs. Yuan Zhao. “By nurturing the next generation of confident multi-lingual communicators, we aim to broaden their horizons and unlock future opportunities for these students.”
This interview article was written by Lucy Wan.
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