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Author | Edited by Han Xiyan | Yo Yo
Source | Pencil Road (ID: pencilnews)
“Let’s start the class” can we continue to “start the class”?
Recently, the vocational education platform “Let’s start a class” has been caught up in negative public opinion. Violent layoffs, arrears of wages for employees, payment from suppliers, and rights protection of students’ refunds… Some people even likened it to “the next ten thousand universities”.
What happened now is actually paying for the aggressive strategies of the past. In the past more than a year, in order to achieve rapid growth, Kaiba has adopted the exact same tactics as K12 in the past: substantial expansion of personnel, subsidy for burning money, huge investment, and the use of the double-edged sword of “protocol class”.
“Many are doing it at a loss.” A former employee of the school said.
In fact, both K12 and vocational education platforms are now facing the same situation: externally, they have to face supervision and doubts, maintain students well, and continue to spend money on investment; internally, they have to adjust the over-reliance agreement The product structure of class and student loans can ease the pressure on cash flow.
After thinking about the pain, the class started from the relatively aggressive expansion mode in the past to the contraction mode of “overwintering”.
However, although the market needs to give entrepreneurs more opportunities for fault tolerance, companies cannot always make employees, students and suppliers pay for their own mistakes.
-01 –
The wave of layoffs in 2022 continues, this time spreading to online vocational education platforms.
“The scale of layoffs is controlled at around 30% and will end at the end of May.” In addition, according to media reports, the company’s probationary employees were basically laid off, and there are currently about 5,000 employees in the course bar. If this number is used as a base, at least 1,500 employees are about to “graduate”.
This wave of layoffs is actually foreshadowed. A former employee of the opening bar said that as early as the Spring Festival in 2022, he and some of his colleagues had been laid off. The reason given was “business changes”, and he was also clearly told that there was no N+1.
Judging from the feedback of many former employees of the class, the “graduation ceremony” for the employees of the class seems to be not very decent.
A former employee broke the news on social platforms that in mid-April, he left the class after leaving the school, and the commission for February, March and April and the salary for April have not been paid. work performance. “The salary call on the resignation certificate after resignation has never been passed, and no one has ever answered it. Recently, the call has directly indicated that the phone is turned off, and I was temporarily notified of dismissal. The buffer time for a day was not given… Only a very few went to the company to make trouble. Talents get the wages they deserve.”
It seems that it is not uncommon for laid-off employees to owe wages. “I have applied for arbitration, but there are too many arbitration cases in the class, and the acceptance will be scheduled for next month.” The above-mentioned employee said.
It is understood that a large part of the pre-employment condition of employees is that the salary will be paid first. “I signed the salary confirmation and resignation guarantee agreement, and stamped the official seal of the class. It said that it was all settled before the 31st, but now it’s the 31st. Can it really be issued?” An employee questioned.
On-the-job employees are also underpaid. According to the dynamics of its employees’ complaints, “the salary is paid one for one, two is paid for one or even three is paid for one, and no commission is paid for three months.”
Regarding the arrears of wages, the official explanation of the class bar is that in the past 1-4 months, the class bar has paid full-staff salaries as usual, and a few of them have had some delays due to the adjustment of wages for home isolation and waiting for work. Another part of the sales staff violated the company’s rules and regulations due to illegal operations, and needed to re-calculate the sales performance commission, so there was a slight delay.
In fact, there are two more problems before the class.
One is the issue of supplier payment. According to the risk information of Tianyancha, Kaikaiba is associated with a number of service contract disputes, education and training contract disputes, and has also been sued for labor disputes.
In March this year, the company was applied for property preservation by Changde Ziyue Culture Communication Co., Ltd., and the court ruled to freeze the company’s deposit of more than 2.41 million yuan; in April this year, the company and its shareholder Huike Education were suspended by Letui (Shanghai) Culture Communication Co., Ltd. The company applied for property preservation, and the court ruled to freeze more than 85.27 million yuan in deposits of the company and Huike Education Bank.
Previously, there were people holding banners at the entrance of the opening bar company, claiming to “pay debts”. According to Jiemian Education, the company owes about 200 million to 300 million to course promotion suppliers, and currently it mainly advertises in short videos.
However, Kaikaiba denied the above situation, saying that “the business has expanded rapidly and the number of agents has increased. Due to the optimization of the process, some agents have delayed the payment collection time. At present, 80% of the agent problems have been solved, and the others will be in 3 All completed within a month.
The second problem is that the class is still caught in the complaint storm. A group of students denounced the “Lessons” platform for violating the contract and refusing to return cash or refunds.
According to the black cat complaint, as of May 25, the class had received 5,832 complaints. Mainly around training loans, scholarship class refunds and other issues. Refunds for scholarship classes are the hardest hit by complaints, and most of the tuition fees for a single student are between 10,000 and 30,000.
Many students said that the class started by widely publicizing the “one-dollar class” to attract students to audition, adding teaching assistant WeChat, and then the teaching assistant asked students to pay for the class, and let the students pay for the class, and “refund after full study” and “cash back for the course every month”, etc. Students buy online courses worth tens of thousands of yuan, and they are advised to use online loans to pay if the money is not enough.
Today’s classes are in trouble both at home and abroad, turbulent, and urgently need to get back on track as soon as possible. Some people have already regarded it as “the next ten thousand universities”.
– 02 –
“This is the price of the aggressive expansion of the class.” An industry analyst said to the pencil.
Statistics show that Kaikeba is mainly engaged in online vocational education. It was officially launched in August 2013, focusing on cultivating compound and application-oriented talents in line with the development trend of the new era.
In fact, the period of rapid development of the opening bar was in the two years after the epidemic. To be more specific, it is after the “double subtraction”.
According to a previous report by Sina Technology, some employees of the school said that at the beginning of 2021, there were only about 1,000 employees in the school, and by the end of 2021, it has nearly 6,000 employees, and its business covers adult, vocational, silver-haired education, and even financial business, Tarot, Zhouyi and other courses.
Its financing peak is also during this time period. According to the Tianyancha APP, in July 2021, Kaikaiba received 600 million yuan in financing; in August 2020, Kaikaiba received 550 million yuan in financing from Hillhouse Ventures and Gaorong Capital.
I thought that after the fall of K12, other educational track projects could learn from experience and no longer make mistakes, but now I find that the pit vocational education that K12 stepped on has not avoided a single one.
For example, over-marketing. After getting the financing, in addition to the expansion of the staff, the course also invested a lot in marketing. After the major players of K12 died down, vocational education immediately inherited the advertising space of K12, which is the same as K12’s original advertising posture. For a period of time, there will always be a class bar in the advertising spaces of Focus Media in the elevators of major office buildings.
Some people in the industry said that the monthly cost of launching a class is tens of millions of yuan, but when Pencil Road verified the authenticity of the data, it did not get a response. But about “expanding the scale by burning money”, the class is very skilled.
Another employee of the opening bar said that the opening of the class in 2021 will launch more cashback courses than before. In order to open up the market and attract students, Kai Course Bar has set up various types of agreement classes. Students who participate in the cashback course can get a full refund at most after they meet the requirements of staying in class, clocking in, and completing their homework. “They are all doing it at a loss, and it’s actually a means of pulling in new ones.”
In addition, not only courses, but also common vocational training institutions on the market have also launched agreed courses to attract target groups. Promise “0 yuan course” “but full refund”.
This method is undoubtedly a double-edged sword. Although it can attract as many students as possible to sign up for participation and drive growth rapidly, this kind of gambling-style course is extremely risky, and the capital chain is under pressure all the time.
Once the promised cashback and refunds fail to arrive on time, the platform will suffer from a large number of complaints and reports from students and other rights protection actions, which will cause irreparable damage to the platform’s image.
This is the current state of the class. “The promised cashback has never been received, but instead, the students continue to pay the money, saying that only by paying the money can they get the previous cashback. It feels no different from fraud,” said a rights protection student at the opening bar.
In the past two years, the opening bar has been repeatedly complained by students. Previously, the Beijing Haidian District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau had named it many times, saying that the platform had a large number of complaints about refund disputes and a low resolution rate.
– 03 –
Under the aggressive expansion strategy, Kaikai Bar has indeed achieved rapid growth. In February this year, Fang Yechang, the founder of Kaikaiba, revealed that Kaikaiba has served more than 20 million students so far. In 2021, the team size will be tripled, and the revenue scale will increase by 5 times.
But the hidden dangers that were once buried have now exploded.
Regarding the fact that the online class is facing a break in the capital chain and there may be a risk of running away, some staff of the opening bar responded to the media saying that although it has been hit by the epidemic, the company’s current operations and cash flow are in a good state. nonsense.”
However, this statement is obviously unconvincing. After all, those educational institutions that have experienced thunderstorms have also said this before. The current class needs to do some practical things to respond to various doubts from the outside world.
What is certain now is that the class has entered the throes of adjustment, and layoffs are one of the manifestations. Although the market needs to give entrepreneurs more opportunities for fault tolerance, enterprises cannot let employees, students and suppliers pay for their mistakes.
In fact, at the end of last year, some investors discussed with Pencil Road, whether vocational education will follow the footsteps of K12? Although he and his peers are also optimistic about vocational education, they still maintain a wait-and-see attitude.
There were curriculum education and Wanmen University in the past, and then there are classes. Facts have proved that vocational education has not become a “safe haven” for educational enterprises and capital. Even the industry giant Zhonggong Education has shifted from a relatively aggressive expansion model in the past few years to a “winter” contraction model.
At the end of November 2021, Zhonggong Education decided at the National Backbone Expansion Conference, but the high proportion of the full-retirement guaranteed class model has affected the company’s profit scale. In the future, it will return to the essence of business, pay attention to profit margins, and strengthen refined operations. Since January 1 this year, Zhonggong Education has removed all products that have not been fully withdrawn, and the “agreement class” will also charge at least three or four thousand yuan for tuition.
In fact, whether it is K12 or vocational education platforms, most of them are now facing the same situation: externally, they must face supervision and doubts, maintain students well, and continue to spend money on investment; internally, they must adjust their over-reliance The product structure of agreement classes and student loans eases the pressure on cash flow.
Under the superposition of layers of pressure, practitioners finally resolved their pains and broke their arms to survive. It’s not that they didn’t realize it, but the rapid growth in the past was too tempting.
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