Chinese corporate training service provider Yunxuetang has closed $100 million in a Series D round of financing led by private equity major Centurium Capital, taking the total capital raised by the firm to $200 million.
Existing shareholders including YF Capital, backed by Alibaba’s former executive chairman Jack Ma Yun, and Susquehanna International Group (SIG), also participated in the investment, according to a recent company statement. Chinese investment bank Index Capital was the exclusive financial advisor of the deal.
Yunxuetang, dual-headquartered in Beijing and eastern China’s coastal province of Jiangsu, leverages AI, cloud computing and big data to offer both free and paid online courses and software to customers based on a freemium model. The company also enables corporate clients to develop and operate online training software customized to their employees.
Established in 2011 and also known as YXT.com, Yunxuetang has so far served thousands of large-scale enterprises and nearly 30,000 small and medium-sized companies, including Hong Kong-listed hot pot restaurant chain Haidilao, Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing, Luckin Coffee, the Chinese Starbucks challenger, and electric vehicle maker NIO, according to the statement. The company has set up branches in over 20 cities in China.
YF Capital “values a growing trend of datafication, cloudification, and emphasis on the vertical application” in the corporate service field. The corporate training market is worth around 100 billion yuan ($14.58 billion), while the employee training segment is “one of the few verticals” in the field that represents “a rigid market demand,” said Xia Xiaoyan, managing director of YF Capital, in the statement.
Proceeds will be used to improve services and build “a content ecology” that will aggregate professional corporate training mentors and institutes to deliver personalized and intelligent learning content, shows the statement.
Yunxuetang raised $50 million in a Series C round led by YF Capital with participation from SIG in September 2018. The company received $22 million in a Series B round from SIG in April 2017. Beijing-based investment firm Everest Venture Capital, and Ximalaya, a Chinese service website for users to share audio and personal radio stations, also poured money into Yunxuetang.
Centurium Capital, a major investor of Luckin Coffee, was co-founded by the former head of Warburg Pincus Asia Pacific. The company raised over $2 billion in its debut USD-denominated fund in July 2019.
Limited partners of the maiden fund include Singapore’s GIC Pte Ltd and Temasek Holdings, Canada’s Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, China Investment Corp (CIC) and U.S. pension fund Washington State Investment Board, according to a Reuters report citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Launched in March 2018, the debut fund reached the first close of nearly $1 billion three months later and beat the $1.5 billion and $1.98 billion fundraising targets since then.
