Specialized education service Tencent Ketan, which translates to “classroom” in English, will cease operations on Oct. 1, according to a notice posted on its website, without giving any reason.
According to the notice, users will no longer be able to access new courses on the platform after August 1, but will be able to watch lessons that have already been added to their schedule before the site is shut down.
ShenzhenTencent did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Landing page of Tencent Ketan's website. Photo: Handout
The closure of the online education service signals Tencent's focus on a restructuring strategy, about a year and a half after its founder, chairman and chief executive officer resigned. Pony Ma Huaten The company Make cost reduction a habit It's not about expansion or scale, it's about finding your core niche.
“In the past, when we saw others gaining weight, we also tried to bulk up, but what we gained was just fat, and we still couldn't beat others,” Ma said at an internal town hall meeting in December 2022, as quoted by Chinese media outlet Jiemian.
Tencent's cost-cutting measures, amid economic headwinds and a recession, have included selling parts of its investment portfolio, shutting non-core businesses and consolidating its broader operations across social media, video games and other market segments. Long-term tightening of regulations.
Tencent Holdings founder, chairman and chief executive officer Ma Huateng said the company needs to focus on its core business. Photo: Reuters
Founded in 2014, Tencent Ketan has worked with various tutoring centers and educational institutions across the country to provide both free and paid courses, ranging from English lessons to training for firefighting technical certification and civil service exams.
In 2023, Tencent Ketan showed signs of scaling back, removing management tools that helped teachers with course schedules and transactions, and then offering only free content on the platform.
In 2022, the company announced that the service has more than 400,000 vocational training lessons and is used by around 26 million users every month. A year ago, the platform had more than 400 million users.
Tencent Holdings continues to play a role in education technology with its artificial intelligence-powered teaching tools. Photo: Shutterstock
Despite shutting down its platform, Tencent is still selling coding programs for teenagers and artificial intelligenceThe company offers its technology to a variety of schools and organizations.
Online education has been a fast-growing sector in mainland China. COVID-19 Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face classes were suspended, but online classes proved extremely effective.
