2“ Screw bar ” Early education industry ： Trillion market , It's hard to be a giant

source ： The Tao always makes sense （ID:daotmt） author ： Dao Zong

Children's Enlightenment digital content provider baby bus , Once again, it was blocked at the listing gate . 

6 month 29 Japan , Shenzhen Stock Exchange shows , Baby bus gem IPO Officially terminate , The company and its sponsors apply to Shenzhen stock exchange for withdrawing the application documents for listing . Actually , This year, 3 month 31 Japan 、 last year 9 month 30 Japan , Due to the expiration of the financial data , Baobabi has twice been suspended by Shenzhen Stock Exchange from its IPO Review . 

Baby bus , Children under three years old and treasure mothers are the most familiar , Its content is mainly nursery rhymes , Most of them are provided to users for free , Called by Baoma “ Sleeping artifact ”. data display ,2021 Second quarter , The monthly average active users of baby bus are close to 1 Billion , At the same time ,B The monthly average active users of the station are 2.37 Billion , The target user group is far lower than B In the case of a station , The user data of baby bus can be said to be excellent . 

However, backed by early education, this trillion “ jinshan ”, The baby bus has empty traffic , But it is difficult to realize , It has never been successfully listed , And this seems to be the case in the early childhood education industry “ Strange image ”： Although there are many gold diggers , It's hard to have a giant . 

Early education is difficult “ pregnancy ” giant

AI media consulting data display ,2020 In, the market scale of China's early education industry reached 3038 One hundred million yuan , a 2019 Annual rise 13.6%, Subsequent epidemic impact , The growth rate is slightly lower than that in previous years , But with the new generation of parents paying more attention to their children's education , expect 2021 The year will exceed 3200 One hundred million yuan . in addition , Europe billion think tank predicts ,2019 The overall size of the online enlightenment market in is about 460 One hundred million yuan to 800 One hundred million yuan between , here we are 2025 year , The overall scale of the online enlightenment market will reach 1000 Million to 1800 One hundred million yuan . 

therefore , Many investment institutions or insiders believe that , Such a large early education market , It is likely to breed the next giant in the education industry . 

Observe the early education industry , It can be found that there are many segments of the early childhood education market , Offline early education institutions including nurseries , For English 、 Mathematical thinking 、 Teaching enlightenment of big Chinese and interest oriented teaching enlightenment , besides , Nursery rhymes 、 Picture books 、 Juvenile animation is also aimed at 0-3 The content industry of the age group , It has also been paid more and more attention by parents , More and more users . 

Baby bus is a content provider , Its core products are mainly children's Enlightenment audio and video and APP, And created many IP image , Such as “ Strange ”、“ Wonderful and wonderful ”、“ Super baby JoJo”、“ Sheriff monkey ” wait , Have a certain degree of brand recognition . 

It's also owning IP image 、 Qiaohu, a Japanese early childhood education brand supported by original content , We can simply compare . data display ,2021 The first three quarters of the fiscal year , Qiao Hu's parent company beilesheng's net revenue 3284 Billion yen （ About us 176 RMB ）, Operating profit 232.4 Billion yen （ About us 12.5 RMB ）, Net profit 107 Billion yen （ About us 5.7 RMB ）. 

And the baby bus prospectus shows ,2018-2020 year , The total assets of the company increased from 3 Billion yuan to 7.7 Billion yuan , The operating income is made up of 2.5 Billion yuan to 6.4 One hundred million yuan , The net profit is from 1 Billion yuan up to 2.6 One hundred million yuan . 

Of course , Qiao Hu's parent company, beilesheng, has already become an education giant that meets the needs of all age groups at different stages , Not just for preschool children , We can look at the international early education career of beilesheng alone . data display ,2021 The fiscal year , The sales volume of beilesheng international early education is 551.98 Billion yen , About us 27.6 RMB , This figure is fourorfive times the operating income of baby bus . 

Take enlightenment English as an example ,VIPKID It can be said that it is the online children's English track in recent years “ The unicorn ”,2018 year ,VIPKID It's done 5 Billion dollars D+ Round of funding , It broke the record of the largest single financing in the global online education field at that time , More than 200 The valuation of billion yuan is unmatched . 

But after the implementation of the double reduction policy ,VIPKID After all, he failed to become a giant , Instead, they were exposed to mass layoffs , At stake . 

The mainstream of China's early childhood education market is still offline institutions , And the offline institutions have now formed Gymboree 、 Two major international early childhood education brand organizations occupy the first and second tier cities , Red, yellow, blue 、 Sports Baby and other local early childhood education brand institutions focus on the sinking market pattern . But even the offline head mechanism , The growth rate is also much lower than before , Ru Mei Jim ,2022 The first quarter report of , Meiji realizes its revenue 4468.56 Ten thousand yuan , fell 44.21%, loss 1167.77 Ten thousand yuan , The net profit in the same period last year was 759.11 Ten thousand yuan . 

Small giants in market segments are difficult to grow , The giants of offline early childhood education institutions are shrinking , Although early education is a gold mine , But it seems that the real giants who can gnaw at this market have not yet appeared .

Make money without education

Early childhood education brand or enterprise , According to the general logic , Many people think that they seem to be the same as other companies in the education and training industry , Earn money from educational services or products , But that's not the case . 

Such as baby bus , Nursery rhyme of baby bus 、 Selected animation and audiobooks , Most of them are provided to users free of charge , The company mainly through APP Access the advertising alliance to obtain cooperative promotion income , And get sharing income through third-party network playback . This is why baby bus is difficult to become an early education giant , Because the advertising patch business does not have much imagination in Internet business . 

The prospectus shows , The advertising revenue of baby bus accounts for from 2018 Year of 72.7% Rise to 2020 Year of 76.76%, Amount from 1.8 Billion rose to nearly 5 One hundred million yuan . among 2019 Year to 2020 year , The company's sales to baidu account for 50% above . 

however , Maybe it's because the baby bus doesn't sell classes , Two don't do one-on-one , To focus on content production and innovation , In order to attract more traffic . But on the contrary ,  Enlightenment education based on the popularization of educational experience and curriculum promotion , Although it is easier to dig deep into the value of users , However, most early education institutions or platforms do not do education business , It's more like a parent's business .  Their business logic is to create anxiety , To harvest parents , This makes the current enlightenment education in a state of abnormal development . 

In the early , In many wechat mother and baby groups or baby trees 、 You know 、 The little red book 、 Microblog and other social platforms , Many parents of young children like to record and show their attention and investment in their baby's enlightenment education , And feedback on the baby's learning effect . After the rise of the entrepreneurial wave of enlightenment education , These communities that gather treasure mothers , Naturally, it has become the best place for early education to penetrate the target group . 

In little red book 、 Microblog and other platforms , Full of “8 I can understand English words in six months ”、“ Just use 1 Become a bilingual adult in six months ” The content such as , Many childcare bloggers even show all kinds of “ Child prodigy ”, Instill the necessity of early education into parents . But what is the actual effect of early education ？ It can only be said that it is not satisfactory , A young parent said ,“ Friends put 3 A month old baby is sent to the morning class , Think you can get high-quality parent-child interaction , As a result, after one class , Baby is sleeping all the way , She felt that the hole was big .” 

Parent child interaction is not the focus of publicity by early childhood education institutions , The key is to develop with the whole brain 、 Thinking exercises 、 Intelligence promotion is a gimmick , Attract anxious 、“ Chicken baby ” Parents pay the bill .

In an early childhood education institution that specializes in whole brain practice , In a promotional video , A founder showed “ Flashcard ”、“ Datura card ” Wait for teaching aids , She flipped through a book quickly , A few seconds to complete the flipping , The content of the book is almost indistinguishable , But the child in front of her can roughly say the main content of the book , And repeatedly expressed “ It's my first time to read this book ”. The teachers of the early childhood education institutions swear to the parents who come to consult , It is said that whole brain practice can achieve a similar effect . 

Is the early education class helpful for children's learning and development , In fact, it has always been a topic being discussed in the educational circles , However, early education institutions like to blindly exaggerate the role of early education , Create and amplify parents' anxiety .  so to speak , The object of their service is not infants , It's the parents , And this idea “ Common failing ” At this stage, early childhood education institutions often stay in one-time transactions , That is, cut a wave of novice parents .

This is also one of the reasons why early childhood education institutions often close down and run away , After all, the longer the time , The quality and effect of early education will only arouse more doubts . 

Great market , Teachers are weak

2017 Around the year , stay K12 Online education has just explored the dual teacher system , Before showing market potential ,0-3 The 12-year-old early education market began to become a new track . The environmental background of this track is the implementation of the two child policy , It has contributed to the birth of a large number of newborn infants , According to statistics ,2017 In, the number of new babies born nationwide was 1758 ten thousand people , The proportion of two children exceeds 50%. thus , Many people see the opportunity of enlightenment education . 

Ape coaching has been launched for enlightening users “ Zebras ” brands , Aim like your baby playing English 0 Babies aged years and above chatter and get investment from Tencent and Sequoia Capital , Former co-founder of ganji.com and CTO Luo Jian founded spark thinking . And soon , Bytes to beat 、 Tal and other giants are also competing to enter the track of enlightenment education . 

Early childhood education is full of entrepreneurs from all walks of life , But there may not be many people who really understand education .  Especially for 0-3 Age group of infants , At present, China does not have 0-3 The early education of the aged infants and young children is included in the education system , The earliest early childhood education is from 3 The age of , Therefore, there is a lack of corresponding teachers . 

Actually, to be more precise , It's not . Sun Gang, Secretary General of the China early education forum, said a long time ago , In terms of the talent training system of preschool education in China , The point is right 3—6 To train the teaching staff for the education of aged children , and 0—3 There is almost no teacher training for early childhood education talents for infants and young children . A parent who enrolled in the morning class said ,“ When I signed up , The organization said that there are nationally renowned experts to teach , But I have had more than ten classes , I've never seen any experts , Most of the teachers in class are young girls ”. 

More than that , We found that many early childhood education institutions or platforms will specifically emphasize that parents must participate in the initial education , Between the lines , That is to say “ To make these early education courses have real effects , Parents need to spend a lot of time , If it doesn't produce the desired effect , That may also be the responsibility of your parents ”. 

This has to make people doubt whether the early education institutions are to cover up the real teaching effect brought by the uneven quality of teachers and talents , And shirk it to the parents .

There are no teachers in early education , The deeper reason lies in the lack of early education theory . Early childhood education originated in Europe and the United States , And our country is about 0—3 The theoretical research on early education of infants and young children started late , Less achievements , As a result, most early childhood education institutions directly copy the early childhood education concepts and curriculum systems of the United States or Hong Kong . 

What is more , With the help of European and American research that is still in the laboratory stage or has been abandoned , There are also some scattered 、 Content that has not been scientifically demonstrated , after “ packing ” and “ Exemplification ”, Form a set of special tricks for parents “ Early education theory ”. 

Of course , It's not just early childhood classes , Many subdivisions of early childhood education lack sufficient 、 Professional education talents support . For example, children's picture books , At present, the current situation of children's picture books in China is that most foreign picture books have introduced copyright , There are only a few independent and original picture book writers in China .  The reason is , The leader of picture books , From author to publisher , All busy “ Please parents ”, Instead of seriously considering the needs of children , This and early education institutions create anxiety 、 The routine of harvesting parents can be said to be “ different approaches but equally satisfactory results ”.

There are many giants in the education industry , Before the implementation of the double reduction policy , New Oriental 、 Tal has been standing for many years , There are also many audiences for early childhood education , But up to now, there is no one “ New Oriental ” Be born . Maybe , Entrepreneurs should consider whether early childhood education is really needed by parents .