The T-Lab platform
Singapore-based edutech startup T-Lab today announced that it has secured a US$1.6 million seed funding round. Led by East Ventures, the funding round included the participation of K3 Ventures, Blue Elephant Capital, and Plug & Play.
In a press statement, the company said that the funding will be used to strengthen T-Lab’s research and development (R&D) division and enhance the curriculum for providing high-quality Chinese language educational resources. It also aims to acquire more users and upgrade its products.
T-Lab is an edutech startup that provides Chinese language learning for students in the US and Southeast Asia. The startup introduced its T-Lab Linnet Chinese platform in 2021; it claimed to be one of the world’s first AI+Live course teaching systems.
It leverages AI technology to optimise the online learning experience for K-12 students, T-Lab teaching team, and parents. The AI gamification teaching aims to stimulate students’ interests and allows them to enjoy and engage with the courses.
T-Lab also builds its tech to adapt to the unique learning requirements of different countries and markets, as well as the individual physiological needs of students. It also provides a learning management system (LMS) to help teachers create interactive courseware and track students’ progress.
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In addition to a technical support team, T-Lab also owns an Education Research Team that comprises international Chinese teachers and a Teaching Team that consists of professors specialising in Chinese language at notable universities such as Peking University and Beijing Foreign Studies University.
The company’s co-founders Gin Zhang and Phillip Zhao started the company when they realised a “serious Chinese language resource and market dislocation overseas.”
“As of 2018, the number of Chinese learners worldwide has reached 180 million and kept growing up to 14.2 per cent annually, while 95 per cent of qualified Chinese teachers are mainly located in Mainland China. Therefore, offline Chinese teaching institutions cannot meet students’ needs in terms of quantity or quality. Students get poor learning experiences and learning results at a high cost,” the company stated.
“Each region has different learning expectations. Meanwhile, offline and online learning institutions still lack authoritative professional experts to formulate, research and develop a complete system of teaching models for different national markets. Despite the mushrooming of online Chinese teaching institutes nowadays, there are still very few applications with AI courses that interact with students’ individual learning needs,” said Zhang.
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Image Credit: T-Lab
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