BEIJING, June 21 (TMTPOST)— TikTok parent ByteDance seems to expand its downsizing to further scale down its push into the education market after Chinese government introduced so-called "double reduction" policy in last May to reduce burdens of both homework and after-school tutoring on students.

Source: Visual China

ByteDance’s education business has undergone a massive reduction and the workforce now down to less than 5,000 people, Chinastarmarket.cn, or Kechuangban Daily, a tech news media outlet cited several independent sources recently. Cutting about 3,000 jobs, the optimization affected a wide range of businesses in the education sector such as tutoring app Xuelang, English learning app Kaiyan, GugGuaLong, a Chinese learning app targeting children aged 2 to 11 years, according to the media. As another major layoff since last November, the recent move was deemed as ByteDance’s active efforts to spin off businesses with less profitability to pave the way for its Hong Kong listing.

Tencent’s online media outlet LatePost also reported ByteDance had a new round of layoffs including cutting 80% workforce of its education business, suggesting just thousands of staff working at the sector currently, down from more than 20,000 workers prior to the “double reduction” policy. Intelligent education, a new business focus that ByteDance transited since the “double reduction”, saw the hardest hit in the latest job cuts, and the company has held off the commercialization of its artificial intelligence education product Hema Aixue, LatePost noted. The media estimated that ByteDance has input more than RMB10 billion in online tutoring in the past three year as it developed and acquired a number of projects from 2018 to 2020. Through series of business overhauls, the Chinese internet giant is set to gradually return to focus on its original root: businesses driven by algorithms.

Layoffs in education sector came as ByteDance was reported to lay off employees at game business.  Reports said that ByteDance had shut down 101 Game Studio, whose establishment was perceived as an important step for the company’s entry into the game industry. Half of staff of the Shanghai-based studio was said to left last week and the sacked staff could receive an N+1 compensation package, which means standard severance compensation plus one month of salary.

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