On January 11th, Zhihu announced the official independent operation of the vocational education brand "Zhihu Zhixue" and released two major strategies centered on digitalization and integration of industry and education. After the news was released, both Zhihu Hong Kong and US stock prices saw an increase.
In the third quarter of 2023, Zhihu's vocational education business revenue reached 145 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 85.6%, accounting for 14.2% of the company's total revenue, setting a new high.
"Our positioning for vocational education is the second growth curve of Zhihu, the other half of Zhihu, and our strategic positioning in the company is very high," Zhang Rongle, CEO of Zhihu Zhixue, said in an interview with Securities Daily.
Positioned as a comprehensive vocational education platform
The "2023 China Vocational Education Industry Development Trends Report" released in November 2023 pointed out that compared to academic vocational education, non academic vocational education (vocational training) accounts for about 30% of the overall vocational education market size, but its growth is more significant. The market size of vocational training in 2020 has exceeded 200 billion yuan, and the annual compound growth rate from 2018 to 2022 has reached double digits.
Currently, non degree vocational education is facing policy regulatory pressure and entering the stage of stock game. Among them, the oligopoly pattern in the public examination industry is obvious, the market structure for postgraduate entrance examination training is scattered, leading enterprises in financial and accounting training occupy the high-end market, and IT training is already a red ocean competition.
"The current problem with vocational education is not a shortage of supply, but a shortage of high-quality supply, a lack of systematic courses, and most self media platforms have fragmented free knowledge supply, but these knowledge supplies cannot form skills." Pan Helin, co-director and researcher of the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center at the International United Business School of Zhejiang University, told Securities Daily reporters that with the increasing pressure of professional competition, taking the civil service exam The prospects of vocational education industries such as civil service examination, legal examination, CPA, and IT are quite promising.
"The industry is still in a stage of mixed quality. When we conducted industry research, we also found that some institutions are doing the same course, but they change their names every year. Why do they change their names? It turns out that their students have complained a lot or their reputation is particularly bad, and they solve this problem by changing their names." Zhang Rongle told reporters that due to low efficiency and low threshold, the entire industry has not shown very good results A very excellent and large-scale comprehensive education platform.
The positioning of Zhihu Zhixue is a comprehensive vocational education platform. Its rapid development is partly due to the huge career growth needs of hundreds of millions of new employees in the Zhihu community, and partly due to the gradual trend of digitalization and platformization in the market. Zhou Yuan, founder and CEO of Zhihu, stated that community and vocational education are two forms of Zhihu. Vocational education fills the other half of Zhihu's entrepreneurial vision and together forms the "complete body" of Zhihu.
As of now, Zhihu Zhixue School has gathered six sub brands: Quality and Vocational Education, Pupi Education, MBA Master, Together Public Exam, Together Teacher Exam, and AGI Classroom, covering more than 30 categories in six major fields. It has provided vocational training services to over 20 million students and has become one of the most comprehensive vocational education content systems covering categories in China.
The industry is currently in the early stages of technological revolution
So, what does "Zhihu Zhixue" rely on to break through the cracks?
A consensus in the industry is that vocational education is an industry with relatively slow progress in digital transformation. The reason is that the chain from service to customer acquisition, sales, and other links is very complex, and each industry has its own characteristics. Therefore, previous AI technology and product innovation have been difficult to make some fundamental changes. Now, the emergence of large model technology has made us increasingly see personalized changes in the industry, including digitalization Under the transformation, many problems will be easily solved Zhang Rongle told reporters.
Zhang Rongle believes that the vocational education industry is in the early stage of technological transformation. "Our development strategy is focused on building a middle platform capability, including the acquisition of traffic, sales conversion, service delivery, and other digital platforms. Using such a platform to support various vertical businesses is what we call a T-shaped development strategy."
Zhihu Zhixue has also identified two major development strategies for the future. On the one hand, through digital empowerment, it will improve the vocational education service system and delivery standards. In the next 1-2 years, Zhihu Zhixue will strive to achieve full coverage of AI models in the entire process of vocational education; On the other hand, through open collaboration and integration of industry and education, we can help vocational education achieve high-quality employment.
It is reported that Zhihu Zhixue has more than 30 sub categories, of which self operated business accounts for about one-third. The self operated business mainly focuses on the skill and interest sectors that Zhihu is good at. But some exam certification categories seek development through investment and mergers and acquisitions. "We focus our energy on improving our technological capabilities. How much value does technology play in it? In what areas does it play a role? Our research will be more thorough than other educational institutions," said Zhang Rongle.
According to Zhang Rongle, Zhihu Zhixue will begin to try combining online and offline methods this year. "There are many categories that need to be developed offline, and it is difficult to provide repeated services solely online. However, if it is purely offline, it cannot achieve particularly good results in terms of scale and technology use."
However, entering Zhihu Zhixue offline is still very cautious. This is because some education companies have experienced a phase of large-scale offline expansion and ultimately faced difficulties.
"At present, the online growth space is sufficient to enable us to achieve our revenue goals. However, if we look to the future, I believe that vocational education must be closely integrated with offline education, including the possibility of many changes in technology. For example, AR has recently made new iterations in technology. As a technology driven company, we will pay more attention to the use of technology in the entire scenario," said Zhang Rongle.