(Yicai Global) Oct. 29 -- ByteDance Technology has spun off its educational technology business into a standalone brand Dali Education as the TikTok owner seeks a more prominent presence in the highly lucrative online education sector driven by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The independence of the Dali Education brand is the start of a long journey, founder and Chief Executive Officer Zhang Yiming said in a press release today.

In order to outperform traditional school classrooms, online education needs to be more innovative, said Dali Education CEO Chen Lin, who heads a team of 10,000.

In view of this, Dali Education has just released its first hardware product, a smart desk. The desk comes with two lamps that are fitted with eye-protection bulbs. The dual-source lighting reduces the shadows cast by students’ hands on their school books. The desk comes with a screen so pupils can watch online classes. It also features a camera, enabling parents to check up on progress and to talk to their children via a video app.

Beijing-based ByteDance has been exploring the education industry from pre-school to adult for some time. In May 2018 it launched Gogokid, a tutoring platform for Chinese children to learn English online with foreign teachers. This was followed by Guagualong, an artificial intelligence-powered tutor in the form of an animated cartoon dragon, Qingbei Xiaoban, which are small, live online classes, and Open Lanugage, another English-language learning product that offers interactive video courses. Last year the company was a lead investor in San Francisco-based education firm Minerva.

Bytedance is optimistic about the prospects of online education and will continue to invest heavily, Chen said. Dali Education does not expect to make a profit for the first three years, he added.

Editor: Kim Taylor