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Ting YE, graduated of Kedge: An Entrepreneur In Tech Education
Ting YE, graduated of the MBA Program, co-established the first educational technology company in China that is truly data-driven.
She is a “Professional Host” for star meetings and KEDGE alumni events, an experienced lecturer for corporate trainings, a senior HR engaged in constant self-improvement, and the co-founder of Jupiter Maker, a programming training brand for kids. She easily navigates in many roles and in many aspects of life, excellently managing the careers that she loves. How to maintain an actively learning and innovative mindset? How to successfully pivot through different careers? How to face the challenges when starting a business? Let's take a look at the alumni story of Ting YE (Christine).
Looking for changes: switching career tracks through MBA
The year 2015 was a turning point for Christine as she bore greater responsibility in work and the growth of her child pushed her to consider the way forward. By keeping learning and innovating, she hoped to make up for her ability shortcomings, open her eyes and achieve a better self. Therefore, in 2015, she applied for SJTU-KEDGE Global MBA Programme.
Internationalization, systematization, courses fully taught in English, and in-service training, these characteristics of the programme attracted Christine. With the help of the MBA programme, she hopes to expand her business vision, to gain a more complete understanding of the management and operation of corporates, to improve her English level, and also to find a suitable direction for later pivoting of career tracks by accumulating necessary knowledge and skills.
During the MBA study, Christine successfully pivoted from traditional industry to Internet industry. A few years after her graduation, she grabbed the market opportunity by joining a friend's entrepreneurial team -- Bohui Education Technology, which is dedicated to education empowered by technology, and found a new track for her career development.
“The two-year MBA programme equipped me with business acumen and the expertise to investigate the market, and also gave me the confidence to start a business. Marketing, branding, financial auditing, business negotiation, team communication and management, all of these essential qualities to start a business have been cultivated through the MBA curriculum. And beyond theories, my practical ability has been greatly improved thanks to the vast amount of case studies, project simulations, and group discussions.”
Starting a business: focus on the products and adjust the market strategy in due course
Christine was born in Wenzhou and most of her family members have their own business. From an early age, she has always been encouraged by the spirit of being bold and summon the will to lead. Dating back to 2017 and 2018，she already conceived the promising prospect of programming course business for kids, and it came at a time when one of her friend with rich experience in tech giants and entrepreneurship decided to start his own business in education. Two people both with enthusiasm for education business reached a consensus immediately.
In 2019, Christine formally joined Bohui Education Technology as co-founder and took charge of marketing operation and branding.
Bohui Education Technology specialises in programming courses for kids (Jupiter Maker is its brand of programming for kids), the developed system curriculum (scratch, python and C++ offered online and offline) and AI-assisted teaching system are the trump cards of Bohui. Christine believes that although the team started late, the core products developed by the technical team can solve various pain points of the kids programming industry, such as lack of quality teacher resources, relatively limited teaching modes, and non-standardised assessment. With the help of AI-assisted teaching system, teachers can be liberated from the pressure of teaching research and focus solely on teaching, and students can also be guided, commented, and leaded by amusing course interactions, benefitting from personalized teaching programmes.
As the head of market operations and branding, Christine summarizes market needs and teaching experience, and forwards them to technical and course R&D teams to ensure that core products keep pace with the times. She confesses that she is also marching ahead while learning, participating in many enrollment classes of various educational institution and major education summits during spare time, in order to understand market trends and adjust the brand marketing strategy in a timely manner.
“Initially, we had been promoting (our courses) nationwide, but gradually discovered that areas other than Shanghai were not functioning well with unsatisfying renewal rate. Afterwards, we concentrated on investing in Shanghai and its surrounding areas, focusing on a more flexible OMO teaching mode, and setting up offline stores and cooperation points (cooperation parties provide venues, while Jupiter Maker provides products, platforms, and training). We also work with several public schools in Shanghai, providing immersive project-based learning and coaching sessions for kids programming competitions.”
Such market strategy has undoubtedly been successful, with the number of Jupiter Maker’s students and cooperative schools soaring considerably, and the students have often scored brilliant results in programming competitions, helping the brand build a good reputation.
Unlike other educational institutions that focus on offline and scaled teaching, Jupiter Maker's light assets operating style, which combines online courses with offline cooperation points, is more flexible, replicable, and more risk-resilient. This was well demonstrated during the COVID pandemic.
Clear positioning: faced with the pandemic and changes in policy
Jupiter Maker has a relatively compact scale with stable operation, and achieved OMO (Online-Merge-Offline) very early. Hence, Jupiter Maker moved all courses online since February 2020, and 90% of their students attended classes as originally planned. In contrast, many enterprises that focus on offline teaching (often of big scale) eventually collapsed since they were unable to withstand the pandemic challenge due to passive waiting.
Under such circumstances, Christine and the team decided to advance against difficulties. Now that the brand has enough students (online & offline nearly 10,000), it should open an offline experience store to enhance the brand's own blood-making function, and so was born the Jupiter Maker Songjiang Experiencing Store.
After that, the issuance of the double-burden-reduction policy (to ease the burden of excessive homework and off-campus tutoring for students undergoing compulsory education) prompted a wave of educational institutions closing-down, and many cooperative offline institutions hope that well-functioning Jupiter Maker can acquire their companies. Faced with the good opportunity to scale up, the founding team still maintained a clear positioning of the brand. Instead of acquisition, they decided to give full play to the advantages of the team to empower more institutions (franchise model) and help enterprises to transform rapidly.
Through the offline experiencing store, Christine hopes more individual consumers and institutions can intuitively experience the courses and services of Jupiter Maker. On the basis of high-quality products, the team intends to optimize the service, especially for organizations with the intention of joining the company. A set of standardized market operation solution on the ways of enrollment, of operation, and of teaching methods will help other institutions to complete their training and transformation within 1-2 months, while ensuring quality.
Future development & suggestions for MBA prospects
Speaking of the future development of the company, Christine said that in addition to the Jupiter Maker, which focuses on programming for kids, Bohui Education Technology is also interacting with schools in developing the product of Smart Teaching, which helps to raise the level of mathematics. Bohui Education Technology hopes to provide appropriate platform support for different scenarios of mathematics classes through precise extrapolation and layered teaching, so as to enhance students’ interest in learning and their learning outcomes.
As for her personal career, Christine said that the team and company are now fairly stable, and she will spend more time thinking about the company's future direction and specific ways to do so. The first is the children programming business, so as to keep pace with changes in parents' consciousness, and effectively cover three or four tier cities; the second is how to apply the latest state policies and the achievements of high-tech enterprises for AI to the products and operations of their enterprise.
For those who are hesitating to apply for an MBA, Christine said that the best investment is self-improvement. The global investment environment is now quite complex, and only by letting yourself stay learning can you continue to innovate and not be abandoned by the times. Those who truly realize financial freedom have always been trying to compete, and no one has stopped learning.
For those participants who are about to begin their MBA learning journey, Christine's suggestion is to have a good learning attitude. Studying while working shall be difficult, but your contribution will certainly be rewarded in your future career development. Christine suggested to communicate more with your classmates, to participate in school activities, and to enjoy the long-lost campus time.
About Bohui Education Technology
Bohui Education is the first educational technology company in China that is truly data-driven and integrates both online and offline teaching, and the core members of the team are from major universities around the world, with more than 10 years of practical experience in computing applications in well-known global companies such as Tencent, eBay, etc. The team was previously known as Qibai Network Technology Co., Ltd. and became fully independent in 2019 and received angel investment in 2019. The company's main businesses currently include Smart Education and Programming for kids.
Jupiter Maker is a child programming brand under Bohui Education Company, which has a complete system of programming for children, covering advanced programmes (such as scratch, Python, C++, etc.), platform and teacher training system. The online courses developed by the company have achieved the first three-teacher education in the country (the results of live broadcasting with recorded courses). Currently, the team has cooperated with a number of key elementary and middle schools in Shanghai to cultivate a team of professional teachers full of professionalism and dedication, which has trained students to achieve outstanding results in various scientific and technological events. Offline courses of the team are now covering Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and many other regions, is continuously expanding the relevant areas.
Smart Education is another major product of Bohui Education, and is currently used mainly in mathematics teaching in middle and high school. Using AI and big data technology, the company has jointly developed the first 4.0 version interactive AI learning education platform in China, in conjunction with key schools in Shanghai.
As of September 2020, the company currently owns 28 intellectual property rights of various kinds, including 4 technology patents, 3 technology copyrights, and 21 trademarks.
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