China’s ByteDance, known chiefly for developing the content aggregator app Jinri Toutiao and the popular short video platforms Douyin and TikTok, is forming its own online education platform for kindergarten, primary, and secondary students, KrASIA’s parent company 36Kr reported on Tuesday.
The school will be partly staffed with former employees of leading educational training sites Xueersi and Yuanfudao, and will go online during this year’s summer vacation, first offering live-broadcast mathematics courses, according to 36Kr.
ByteDance has not responded to KrAsia’s request for a comment.
This move is in line with the company’s ambitions to enter the edtech sector. Two months ago, the firm acquired patents from a smartphone maker to adapt them for hardware used in education products and services. In May 2018, the company unveiled an online tutoring portal Gogokid to compete with the Tencent-backed VIPKid.