According to 36kr, educational SaaS provider Banxiaoer(班小二) closed its angel round invested by Mindfulness Capital and EdBeta Fund, the original shareholder who invested in the company’s seed round of financing. The latest fund will be used to improve the R&D of products, figure out the business model, as well as accumulate more users.

School education is not limited to the in-class teaching, teachers usually release the syllabus before the class and students could get prepared, plus, teachers also need to keep in touch with parents and check whether the students have finished the assignments after school.

With its large user base, WeChat has become one of the most common tools used by schools to communicate with parents and students, but the group chatting seems to be inefficient. To overcome the shortcoming, Banxiaoer has developed a WeChat mini-program to empower the class management so that teachers can free up the time to concentrate on teaching and researching.

In terms of marketing strategy, Banxiaoer started from a pilot in a small scale and expanded its business by relying on WeChat’s social attributes, Up to now, the company has accumulated millions of teacher and parent users. Meeting the demand generated by the distance learning amid the outbreak of coronavirus, Banxiaoer has witnessed more than one million daily active users, which has increased by many folds.

As for the market prospect, it remains to be seen whether schools are willing to pay for such tools, and the ceiling of SaaS providers’ revenue of ToB business is limited due to the regulations of public schools’ expenditure.

And from the perspective of business-to-consumer, this kind of product charging for students is not mandatory for schools to introduce, thus they many face the challenge of promotion. At the current stage, Banxiaoer is exploring the way to monetize on the basis of its existing traffic pool in WeChat.