Lifestyle-education businesses go O2O

Cici Zhao, Cici Dance Studio founder [Phoot provided to China Daily]

Leisure-activity education is booming in big cities as a growing number of young professionals seek new forms of entertainment.

Cici Dance Studio founder Cici Zhao said most of her white-collar customers take classes in hip-hop and jazz dancing.

"My students work in advertisement, law and finance," she said.

"Some hold high posts like CEO. They come because dance is empowering. It blends the body and mind, and instills confidence."

Beijing hosts about 500 dance institutions, Zhao said.

The city is a cultural hub where more residents are open to Western culture and interested in sculpting their bodies while freeing their minds in spontaneous ways, she explained.

But even spending a few hours in a bricks-and-mortar building may be a luxury for many urbanites. This has spurred the growth of the online-offline model.

The O2O hobbies-and-interests platform Master breaks lessons into bite-sized bits.

"Our videos are under 2 minutes, which serves our target users, who are ages 20 to 40," said Master's founder, Jackie Zhang.

The app's content includes lifestyle courses on anything from art and soap-making to extreme sports like skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing. "

The hobby-education market has reached nearly 50 billion yuan ($7.26 billion).

"We don't have a competitor doing exactly what we do," Zhang said.

Master is working with e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd to move into online and new retail.

"We have (e-commerce) bases in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou already," he said.

"I have faith in new retail, and the next step is to use our video content to attract traffic for our offline business."

Silverwater Capital founder Greg Dimitrious said: "As a platform with education resources, Master will be able to collect big data from the users' consumption behavior and capability, which can allow it to dig deep into the business."

The online platform received millions of yuan in financing in its Pre-A round by Tendence Capital late last year.