Taobao enters thriving online education market

China's thriving online education market now has a new player: Taobao.

The earliest e-commerce site of Alibaba Group said on Monday it will allocate resources to help over 1,000 education service companies each secure 100,000 students over the course of three years.

A suite of tools, including Alibaba's group-buying arm Juhuasuan, livestreaming unit Taobao Live, and the search function in Alibaba's mini programs, are accessible to education agencies to tap into the 846 million active users on the site, the company said.

The decision to penetrate into the education realm fits well into the trend when the number of searches on education courses almost doubled between January to May compared with same period a year ago, said Huang Lei, the general manager overseeing Taobao's newly-established education arm.

"Taobao never lacks education-related offerings. We ride the trend and use our platform to digitalize the education industry," Huang said in a press release.

Taobao already hosts over 10,000 education agencies, like New Oriental School and VIPKid, providing some 3 million courses targeting all types of students.

Livestreaming has proven to be an effective vehicle to attract users. For instance, an online training agency specializing in coaching civil servant exams has added 8,000 followers following one livestreaming session by a renowned lecturer.

Other education forms are related to merchandise-selling and the pay-for-knowledge model, a combination popular in certain market segments, like skincare and maternity, where influencers offer industry insights in livestreaming sessions and sell products at the same time.