Online education provider Zuoyebang to raise $350m

Chinese online education company Zuoyebang announced Wednesday it will raise $350 million in its series D financing.

The fresh round of financing is part of the company's broader efforts to promote education resources to more students across China through advanced technologies.

"We will use this round of financing to ramp up efforts on technologies, teaching and research products, as well as talent recruitment," said Hou Jianbin, founder and CEO of Zuoyebang.

He added that it will also be used for the expansion of new businesses, as the company just launched its new business — E Raccoon English, an online English learning platform, earlier this month.

The fundraising was led by global investment management firm Coatue, with Goldman Sachs, Primavera Capital Group, Sequoia Capital China, GGV Capital, Xiang He Capital, Tiantu Capital, NEA and TH Capital among the investors.

"Chinese education is experiencing a huge change from offline to online," said Jiang Kai, managing director of Coatue China.

"(With this round of financing) Zuoyebang will continue to consolidate its leading position in the online education field with its huge amount of users and advanced technologies," Jiang added.

Zuoyebang, an after-school tutoring platform, allows students to take online courses covering primary school to high school on its Zuoyebang Yike platform.

The latest data showed that it has accumulated 5 million paid users, with half of them from third- to sixth-tier areas in China.