CUSSA Successfully Closes RMB 20 Million Series A Financing!

It has been reported that Hyde Capital has made an exclusive investment in CUSSA, the leading international summer program brand, and raised RMB 20 million in Series A financing. This round of financing will be used to optimize CUSSA's products, expand its team, and upgrade its industrial chain to promote the in-depth construction and horizontal development of the CUSSA brand.

CUSSA is the first academic alliance of the international summer school programs of the top universities in China, with a market share of about 25% in the segmented summer school industry, ranking first in the industry. In 2012, CUSSA took the lead in introducing the foreign summer school international summer program system in China, inviting professors from overseas famous schools to the domestic partner universities, and providing the international summer school programs for overseas universities based on the relatively low teaching cost in China. Chinese international students are provided with a convenient and affordable fast track to earn credits.

With the cooperation of Hyde Capital, we are about to see the infinite possibilities of the overseas study abroad market.

Why is CUSSA bucking the trend in 2020?

According to the data released by the Ministry of Education, the total number of Chinese students studying abroad in 2018 was 662,100, an increase of 53,700 compared with 2017, an increase of 8.83% year-on-year, showing growth for five consecutive years. Under the influence of the global Covid-19 epidemic in 2020, many international students are facing the problem of how to continue their studies, which puts forward a higher demand for related service enterprises: whoever can accurately solve the current problems can achieve counter-trend growth.

Since the beginning of CUSSA, we have been solving the practical problems of international students. As the founder and CEO of CUSSA, Li Lin, at the beginning of his undergraduate study at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States, found that the cross-cultural learning environment is a dilemma that every international student faces. While completing the school's academic requirements, he transformed and extended resources, built a platform, and incubated projects based on international students' learning needs. This entrepreneurial process led him to develop the values of perseverance and struggle. Even if he meets the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, he can still lead the company to overcome the thorns and open a more potential space as well as a more open business ecosystem for the sustainable development of the company.

Why did CUSSA get financing at the time?

The overall strength of an enterprise determines the attitude of the capital market.

Firstly, the 9-year accumulation of corporate strength has polished the core advantage of a highly competitive market.

CUSSA precisely serves the immediate needs of international students' education, produces and builds social innovation products and programs around the core product of "overseas credit courses", realizes effective supply of effective demand, achieves a closed-loop of product transactions, forms competitive values that are hard to imitate and surpass, and realizes asset-light enterprise sustainable development.

Up to now, CUSSA has been successfully running schools for 9 years, serving over 10,000 Chinese students overseas and saving over 5 billion RMB for Chinese student families. CUSSA has established cooperation with dozens of universities, including Renmin University of China, Zhejiang University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, and National Sun Yat-sen University (Taiwan), and established the China University Summer School Alliance (CUSSA) in cooperation with many domestic universities. CUSSA helps tens of thousands of children from ordinary families to realize their dream of studying abroad, adapt to the overseas study life, and successfully complete their studies abroad. Meanwhile, CUSSA introduces the top international education experience to Chinese students and helps overseas Chinese students to realize their personalized academic development through the intelligent assessment and analysis system based on cutting-edge education technology.

Secondly, CUSSA withstands the test of market risk and assumes social responsibility as a "heroic Wuhan enterprise".

Since the outbreak of the epidemic in early 2020, more than 200,000 Wuhan enterprises have disappeared. The first thing that enterprises face is survival, but CUSSA has been able to revive and achieve leapfrog development in the center of the epidemic.

Firstly, CUSSA completed the wind control management in advance, with the goal of protecting the interests of the students to the greatest extent possible, giving up profits, guaranteeing the quality of products and project implementation, and taking the lead in launching the online course solution to ensure a high degree of user adhesion.

Secondly, we guarantee employment and never lay off employees. CUSSA enhances team cohesion with one mind, actively creates new jobs, and develops employee value.

Lastly, to survive and develop at the same time, to overcome the difficulties, we proposed to expand the scale of formal employment while securing stable jobs. CUSSA actively fought the epidemic, donated materials, assisted the government and society in relieving the pressure of the epidemic, and shouldered the social responsibility and commitment.

Finally, as of June 2020, the number of student contracts has exceeded that of last year, achieving a contrarian growth under the "epidemic winter". What a shining specimen of the "heroic Wuhan enterprise"!

CUSSA's corporate values are growth, altruism, co-creation, and sustainability. It is only when enterprises continue to create valuable and innovative projects and embody the "social nature" of the innovation process that new social vitality can be generated, thus realizing the perpetual movement and sustainability of enterprises and corporate social responsibility.

As the investor of this round of CUSSA financing, Mr. Zhou Minghai, Chairman of Hyde Capital, said, "We are very pleased to complete this investment in CUSSA, which, despite the epidemic, has been able to grow against the trend and become a positive force for social commitment and social construction during the three months of Wuhan's anti-epidemic campaign. CUSSA has a perfect risk warning mechanism and a flexible market strategy. We are confident that we can help the CUSSA team to do a good job in providing universal high-end education and better service to more Chinese families."

When education meets capital, what will the future innovative products of international study abroad education be like?

After the "elimination race" in the first half of 2020, what kind of products will be faster and more popular in the next education track?

After the completion of this round of financing, CUSSA will strengthen the brand depth construction and horizontal development by leveraging CUSSA's industry experience and resource accumulation in the field of international education abroad, said Li Lin, founder and CEO of CUSSA. Innovative products are mainly embodied in the following three directions.

①Launch the high-end study abroad application brand "HanGuang". It helps students to get into the world's top universities on a fast track and makes personalized academic development plans.

②Launch products to improve research background and job search coaching. Students can learn from professors at top foreign universities and senior professionals in Silicon Valley and Wall Street industries. Through systematic practical courses, students can improve their further education and comprehensive competitiveness.

③Upgrade and polish the core summer school section, start campuses in more cities in China, and help more universities to establish an international credit recognition system. We will also help international students and prospective students in more cities to have the opportunity to attend classes at their doorstep and save money on studying abroad.

Li Lin insists that for more students from ordinary Chinese families to realize their dream of studying abroad, we must support the exploration of more inclusive ways to provide more diversified and professional post-study services to the international student community in China. This path must continue to pour the power of innovation.

Summary

This round of financing will be another new starting point for CUSSA. It is believed that CUSSA will continue to make efforts in the education abroad section, introduce top international education experience, explore as well as innovate in its sub-segmented markets, and devote itself to the social goal of inclusive education abroad, providing more Chinese families with convenient services in the whole industry chain of education abroad.