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VIPKID, an online English education platform for children, has completed a $200m fundraising led by Sequoia Capital China and Tencent Holdings that pushes the Beijing-based company’s valuation above $1bn.
在线儿童英语教育平台VIPKID已完成2亿美元融资，本轮融资由红杉中国(Sequoia Capital China)和腾讯控股(Tencent Holdings)领投，将这家北京公司的估值推升到10亿美元以上。
The fundraising comes as companies are scrapping the highly competitive part of the $8bn market for English language tutoring.
本轮融资进行之际，中国企业正在争夺价值80亿美元，竞争激烈的英语家教市场。
VIPKID hopes to tap the willingness of Chinese parents to spend whatever it takes to give their children an educational edge with new technologies that make tutoring far more scalable.
中国父母愿意倾尽所有来让孩子获得教育优势，VIPKID希望凭借让家教更具扩展性的新技术，能够利用这一意愿。
In China, the company currently has almost half of the Rmb2bn ($300m) online tutoring market.
目前中国在线辅导市场达到20亿元人民币（合3亿美元），VIPKID占据了近一半市场。
In late May, one of VIPKID’s rivals, Yuanfudao, raised $120m giving that start-up a valuation worth over $1bn as well — with Tencent also taking part in that financing.
5月下旬，VIPKID的竞争对手猿辅导(Yuanfudao)募得1.2亿美元，让这家创业公司的估值也超过了10亿美元，腾讯也参与了此次融资。
“Everyone in China understands the power of education,” says Cindy Mi, the young founder and chief executive of VIPKID.
VIPKID的年轻创始人兼首席执行官米雯娟(Cindy Mi)表示：“在中国人人都知道教育的力量。”
Companies that combine technology with investment such as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, are also involved.
阿里巴巴(Alibaba)、百度(Baidu)和腾讯等结合技术与投资的公司也参与了进来。
Baidu took a stake in Zuo Ye Bang, another online education start-up, while VIPKID is a big user of Tencent Cloud to store the data it keeps on its 200,000 students, their 20,000 teachers and more than 1m classes.
百度入股了另一家在线教育初创公司作业帮(Zuo Ye Bang)，而VIPKID是腾讯云(Tencent Cloud)的大客户，它将20万名学生、2万名教师以及100多万个班级的数据存储在腾讯云上。
VIPKID uses native English speakers in the US and Canada. Many of its rivals recruit local Chinese tutors who have studied education at top universities in China.
VIPKID雇佣的是美国和加拿大的英语母语者。它的许多竞争对手则招募的是曾在中国一流大学学习教育的中国本土教师。
Ms Mi was a dropout from high school in Harbin, where she read science fiction in her maths classes and never took the “gao kao”, the exam that determines the fate of most students seeking admission to the top universities in the country. She says that she was exposed to English from about the age of 12 and practised using audio cassettes of country western music such as “Country road” and the theme song from the film Titanic.
米雯娟是哈尔滨一所高中的辍学生，她会在数学课上看科幻小说，而且她从未参加过高考——这个考试决定了中国绝大多数想要入读国内一流大学的学生的命运。米雯娟说她12岁左右才接触到英语，听着《乡村之路》(Country road)等美国乡村音乐以及《泰坦尼克号》(Titanic)电影主题曲的磁带来练习英语。
She then worked with her uncle who ran a tutoring business in Harbin, teaching during the day and turning the classroom into a bedroom at night.
后来她与在哈尔滨经营辅导生意的叔叔一起工作，白天教学，晚上就把教室当做卧室。
On August 23, the company also announced a new, mirror image initiative: it is launching Lingo Bus, using Chinese tutors to help children in North America and elsewhere in the world learn Chinese. Among the first clients are the children of VIPKID’s US-based English teachers.
8月23日，VIPKID还宣布了一项新的镜像计划，它推出了Lingo Bus，雇佣中国教师帮助北美以及全球其他地区的儿童学习汉语。首批用户中就有VIPKID美国英语教师的孩子。
