italki, a Shangai, China-based marketplace for online language teachers, raised $3m in Series A funding.
Hujiang*, a Chinese online education company, made the investment.
The company intends to use the funds to expand its marketplace in China, where Hujiang already has over 110 million users.
Led by Kevin Chen and Yongyue Jiang, italki connects learners with online language teachers for 1-on-1 language lessons. On the platform, teachers set their own prices, and italki generates a 15% commission from the lessons transacted. The average price for an hour of personal lessons is $10-15 per hour.
The company has over 3,000 active language teachers and thousands of paid online lessons take place daily from the U.S., Western Europe, Russia and Brazil.
Hujiang, whose latest funding was $157m from China Minsheng Investment and Baidu, has also partnered with McGraw-Hill, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and HarperCollins.
FinSMEs
24/06/2016