Beijing, PRC, December 1st, 2008

Idapted Ltd., a leading provider of live on-demand Mandarin and English language training (www.studiochinese.com, www.eqenglish.com), today announced the closing of its Series A financing with Gobi Partners and Ambient Sound Investments (ASI) leading the round. Other follow-on investors include Russ Siegelman, a prominent Silicon Valley angel investor and Xu Xiao Ping, co-founder of New Oriental Education (EDU), a NYSE listed English training company both of whom originally participated in Idapted’s seed round financing. The financing round will be used to support Idapted’s growth through team expansion, product development and marketing.

“Online education holds the promise of delivering quality training to people throughout the world,” says Lawrence Tse, Partner, Gobi Partners. “Idapted’s team brings rich experience from diverse backgrounds to create a unique approach to delivering on-demand one on one language training. Idapted is well positioned to provide a highly effective and scalable service to this rapidly expanding market segment.”

“It’s great to have both Gobi Partners and ASI as investors,” says Adrian Li, CEO of Idapted. “Gobi has highly complementary strategic relationships and a deep understanding of the digital media space in China. The principals of ASI know what it takes to build a startup into a multibillion dollar company. You couldn’t ask for a better combination.”

Over the past several months demand for the EQEnglish service has grown strongly driven by customer referrals and the successes of students who have rapidly improved their oral English using the service. Also, Leveraging the same technology infrastructure www.studiochinese.com was launched this year and teaches survival Chinese to people seeking to learn how to speak Chinese.

Idapted was founded by Adrian Li and Jonathan Palley in 2005 after meeting through Google while at Stanford and discovering they were both passionate about using technology to enhance education.

About Idapted, Ltd.

Idapted provides live on-demand language learning powered by in house online learning technology and an extensive network of Idapted certified instructors. Everyday, students from around the world connect with Idapted instructors for one on one Mandarin and English training through our websites www.studiochinese.com and www.eqenglish.com.

Idapted is backed by Gobi Partners and Ambient Sound Investments as well as experienced Angel Investors. The Company’s Board of Advisors includes well known mentors Bill Trenchard, President of LiveOps; Russ Siegelman formerly of VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and Xu Xiao Ping, co-founder for New Oriental School (EDU).

About Gobi Partners

Gobi Partners is a China-based venture capital firm with over US$200 million under management and focuses on early stage investments in China’s IT and digital media sectors. Gobi defines digital media as a new form of communication emerging from the convergence in telecommunications, media and technology. Gobi invests in companies that are pushing the frontier, integrating gaps or enabling consolidation within the digital media value chain. Gobi includes IBM, NTT DoCoMo, Sierra Ventures, McGraw-Hill, Steamboat Ventures (the venture capital arm of The Walt Disney Company), and Nokia Growth Partners as investors. For more information, please visit www.gobivc.com.

About ASI
Ambient Sound Investments (ASI) was established by the former founding engineers of Skype. ASI is investing shareholders’ equity in start-ups offering innovative technology. Since March 2006 the company has invested in companies in telematics, biotechnology, power electronics and internet services. For more information, please visit: www.asi.ee.

For More Information Please Contact Us
Phone: 1-888-887-9913
Email: info@idapted.com