(Yicai) Aug. 25 -- East Buy Holding, an e-commerce unit of New Oriental Education and Technology Group that is driving the private education provider's transformation, will diversify and begin live streaming on Alibaba Group Holding's Taobao after Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, suspended its show last month.

East Buy will start on Taobao on Aug. 29, the Beijing-based company announced yesterday. Yu Minhong, founder of New Oriental, and Sun Dongxu, chief executive of East Buy will lead the team.

In late July, shares of East Buy [HKG: 1797] slumped after the company said it would not be seen on Douyin for three straight days to comply with certain rules.

A manager of the online marketer and seller said that the company plans to develop on multiple platforms and will increase its efforts on Douyin, Taobao, and its self-operated mobile application, The Paper reported yesterday.

The target for the Taobao debut is ambitious as East Buy intends to sell more than 60 types of self-managed products and more than 10 of them have already logged sales exceeding one million units. Moreover, the firm plans to offer a 12 percent discount on all self-branded products. East Buy has obtained subsidies to enter Taobao, an insider said, adding that Taobao’s supply chain will help the e-commerce firm in sourcing.

New Oriental started transforming its online education subsidiary called Koolearn Technology Holding into an online retail company, later renamed East Buy, after regulators banned off-campus tutoring for students from grade one to grade nine in 2021 to ease children's burdens. But East Buy has kept some of its original essence as most of the performers are former teachers with cultural and well-educated hosting style.

East Buy's new direction is deemed a success as Huatai Securities predicted in a research report that in the fiscal year of 2023, the gross merchandise volume of East Buy’s live e-commerce business exceeded CNY10 billion (USD1.4 billion).

Editor: Emmi Laine