A senior executive at TikTok owner ByteDance said the company plans to invest "a huge amount" of capital into its newly-established education technology business but warned that the unit will be unlikely to profit in the next three years.

Beijing-based ByteDance has made education technology one of its top priorities alongside short video app TikTok.

Chen Lin, senior vice president at ByteDance, said in an internal speech that the company entered the education technology sector in 2016 via investments and trying out various projects, according to a transcript published by the company on social media.

ByteDance operates one-on-one English tutoring app GoGoKid and online course livestreaming app Qingbei.

Eight-year-old ByteDance's revenue mainly comes from its Chinese short video app Douyin and news aggregator Jinri Toutiao. The company is a late entrant to China's education technology market, as industry leader Yuanfudao was founded in 2012 and rival Zuoyebang started up in 2013.

Last April, massive layoffs were reported at GoGokid. Bytedance later confirmed that the reduction was part of a broader push to stabilize the company and achieve higher efficiency because the online education sector requires more patience and effort, but denied GoGokid's sales team was reduced by 70 percent.

According to Sina cited an education industry practitioner, a few years ago, top Chinese Internet giants, such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (collectively referred to as BAT), entered the education industry with huge investment, but currently, only Youdao, Inc., an intelligent learning firm of China's internet giant NetEase has achieved a small success. "Education and the company's genes have a strong connection. It is not only the investment of resources, but Bytedance is still in the exploring stage."

The industry was one of a few sectors that saw its fortunes shine during the coronavirus pandemic as widespread lockdowns in China and school closures forced students to take online classes from home for many months.

(Cover image: A man walks by a logo of Bytedance, the China-based company which owns the short video app TikTok, or Douyin, at its office in Beijing, China July 7, 2020. /Reuters)