By CHEN Zhenfang
East Buy Holding has sold its education business to its parent company New Oriental for 1.5 billion yuan (US$200 million), the e-commerce firm said on Tuesday night.
East Buy said that the sale is part of the restructuring of New Oriental to align its business units with the operational environment more clearly. New Oriental focuses on education, while East Buy, from now on, will deal exclusively in live streaming.
Once known as Koolearn Technology, East Buy sold online courses and provided consulting on study abroad, before starting to sell agricultural products via live streaming last year when the tutoring business went through some well-documented upheavals.
Teachers-turned-live-streamers were a huge success. In January, Koolearn changed its name to East Buy, and education took a back seat.
At the end of August this year, East Buy presented its first financial report since the transformation. Revenue for the fiscal year 2023 reached 4.5 billion yuan, up 651 percent. Gross profit reached 2 billion yuan, which compares very favorably with 400 million yuan the year before.
East Buy’s education business, now back with the parent company, provides domestic and overseas university exam preparation. It also works with institutional clients such as higher education institutions, public libraries and streaming providers, offering digital multimedia library services.
Overall, the exam preparation business brings in about six times more than library services. Overseas exam preparation is at historical highs in revenue, enrollment, and profits.
However, e-commerce live streaming is suddenly the main business of East Buy, bringing in 3.9 billion yuan, 87 percent of total revenue.
