Tencent to close online education service as tech giant cuts back on noncore operations

Tencent Holdings is closing down its 10-year-old online education platform with more than 400 million users, as the Chinese video gaming and social media giant continues to cut noncore operations.

The professional education service Tencent Ketang, which translates to "classroom" in English, will cease operations on October 1, according to a notice posted on its website, without providing any reason.

While users will no longer be able to access new courses on the platform from August 1, they can still watch lessons that have already been added to their schedules until the site is closed, the notice said.

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Shenzhen-based Tencent did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

The landing page of the Tencent Ketang website. Photo: Handout alt=The landing page of the Tencent Ketang website. Photo: Handout>

Shuttering the online education service shows Tencent's focus on its restructuring strategy, about a year and half after founder, chairman and chief executive Pony Ma Huateng said the company must get into a habit of cutting costs and finding core areas, instead of seeking expansion and scale.

"In the past, when we saw others were adding weight, we also tried to increase in size, but what we added was just fat, and we were still unable to defeat others," Ma said in a December 2022 internal town hall meeting, which was quoted in a report by Chinese media outlet Jiemian.

Tencent's cost-cutting efforts have included divesting some of its investment portfolio, closing noncore businesses, and consolidating its sprawling operations across social media, video gaming and other market segments amid economic headwinds and a lengthy regulatory crackdown.

Last December, Tencent offloaded its loss-making animation and comics business to subsidiary China Literature, the country's largest online publishing and e-book company in a 600 million yuan (US$83.6 million) deal. In the same month, Tencent closed its seven-year-old live-streaming service Now as part of "business adjustments".

Tencent Holdings founder, chairman and chief executive Pony Ma Huateng says the company must focus on its core businesses. Photo: Reuters alt=Tencent Holdings founder, chairman and chief executive Pony Ma Huateng says the company must focus on its core businesses. Photo: Reuters>

Established in 2014, Tencent Ketang worked with various tutoring centres and education organisations across the country to provide both free and paid courses, ranging from English lessons and training for fire engineering certification and civil service examination.

In 2023, Tencent Ketang showed signs of contraction when it discontinued the management tool that helped teachers with course scheduling and transactions, and later only offered free content on its platform.

The service had more than 400,000 vocational training lessons that attracted about 26 million users each month, the company said in 2022. A year earlier, the platform recorded more than 400 million users.

Tencent Holdings remains involved in education technology, as it runs an artificial-intelligence-powered teaching tool. Photos: Shutterstock alt=Tencent Holdings remains involved in education technology, as it runs an artificial-intelligence-powered teaching tool. Photos: Shutterstock>

Despite shutting down the platform, Tencent remains involved in the education sector with its coding programme for teenagers and an artificial-intelligence-powered teaching tool. The company also offers its technologies to various schools and organisations.

Online education was a booming sector on the mainland during the Covid-19 pandemic, as it provided an alternative to the disrupted lessons in bricks-and-mortar classrooms.

E-learning platforms like Tencent Ketang, however, saw increased competition from Bilibili and other video-streaming sites that offered education content.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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