The Yitiku office in zhongguancun, a hub of innovation in Beijing. (Photo by Song Wei/chinadaily.com.cn)
Wu's idea of building this teacher-centered system relates to his experience in college.
Back then, he often went to schools to rent the room or place for shooting and he talked frequently with teachers. He noticed that teachers were tired of preparing test papers for students and spent remarkably large amount of time checking those papers.
China is renowned for its exam-oriented education system which is deeply rooted and hard to change in short time. Students have to do large amount of exercises so that they can prepare themselves better for the exams. The tedious work of teachers rang the bell inside Wu's entrepreneur mind.
Moreover, the government is starting to favor the combination of traditional education and technology, giving Wu one more reason to focus on online education. Given the boom in online education right now, it may come as a surprise to many, but back in 2010 China brought up the idea of education informatization as the goal for the next decade, which left a hint of the technology-led revolution on the tradition education field.
"Over 70 percent functions of our system are designed for teachers because the market for students is already taken. We need to find a more specific market to live on," Wu said.
Yitiku offers teachers all functions related to exams. It solves an array of questions the teachers may have by analyzing the test results: what type of questions are the hardest, how many times they have appeared in the exams before, how students perform on the paper, etc.
The system is also able to push notifications for the students about the related questions they might have made mistakes in based on previous records.
Wu said the system will be further developed to ease the teachers' burden. It will help them to monitor students' response to a course and increase the interaction between them.
Wu values the data, which is based on teachers and students work, the most. "Data is extremely important."
There is a reason for that. An official from the Ministry of Education once admitted their helplessness to Wu. "They cannot evaluate the students' academic performance nationwide since the data is impossible to collect. The nationwide college entrance examination is the only chance we get to know students' academic ability. Before the students turn 18, we are in the dark. All statistics are too narrow…only valid in local exams," he said.
It shocked Wu and became the next goal for his company. According to him, the company has been designing a project that can collect all the data from first grade in primary school to senior grade in high school nationwide if it is available countrywide.
"The sources from the third party will be a great support for the traditional education we have right now," he added.
But the seemingly bright future of Yitiku is being put to test as more players enter the young market, eating the emerging demand.
Yitiku is not the only online education company that has succeeded in receiving considerable investment.
Genshuixue.com, an O2O platform that connects students with right tutor through Internet, received their A round investment of $50 million in March; Yuantiku, an online smart exam database, landed its $60 million funding for D round in April; 17zuoye.com, an online study platform targeted at Chinese K-12(kindergarten to grade 12) space, announced their $100 million financing for D round in February.
The online education industry is excited to receive more than $500 million in total financing in the first quarter. Many entrepreneurs with their business instincts in Internet and education, like Wu, started their journey in the business.
Wu has to fight against a long list of more experienced and equally ambitious entrepreneurs who have a deeper pocket.
Being asked what are the differences between entrepreneurs who are in their 90s and who are in 80s or even earlier, Wu thinks the younger generation which grew up with the Internet is born with the ability to absorb the different information at the same time in a faster speed than those born in 80s or 70s.
"It's like the network's bandwidth. Our (people born in 90s) bandwidth of network is 100M/s, theirs (people born in 80s, 70s) is 10M/s," Wu said.
