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  • November 2022 (Revised March 2023)
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OneSmart

By: Nien-he Hsieh, Meg Rithmire and Shu Lin
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:26
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Abstract

At the end of 2021, Xi “Steve” Zhang was facing an existential crisis for himself and his business. OneSmart was a premium educational company founded in 2008 offering K-12 afterschool tutoring for students nationwide under a number of brands. The company was founded in 2008 and went public in 2018. The tutoring sector was big business in China, where parents focused resources on typically only children in a highly competitive education environment. But a suite of new regulations in 2021 capped the hours that tutoring firms could supply, the prices they could charge, and essentially banned afterschool tutoring for K-9 students. By 2021, OneSmart shares were trading on the NYSE at below the required $1 per share. Zhang had to make sense of what went wrong and what could be next.

Keywords

Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Crisis Management; Failure; Education Industry; China

Citation

Hsieh, Nien-he, Meg Rithmire, and Shu Lin. "OneSmart." Harvard Business School Case 723-017, November 2022. (Revised March 2023.)
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About The Authors

Nien-he Hsieh

General Management
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Meg Rithmire

Business, Government and the International Economy
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Related Work

    • November 2022 (Revised March 2023)
    • Faculty Research

    OneSmart

    By: Nien-he Hsieh, Meg Rithmire and Shu Lin
Related Work
  • OneSmart By: Nien-he Hsieh, Meg Rithmire and Shu Lin
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