Netray Monitoring: Zenius' Online Learning Guidance Application Closes, Netizens X Appreciate

JAKARTA Online tutoring application Zenius was forced to temporarily close operations. In his official statement, Zenius' management said that the reason the online education platform temporarily closed its operations was due to operational challenges.

The edutech startup company is closed after 20 years of operation.

"Since 2004, Zenius has played an important role in realizing the dreams of millions of students, helping them enter the dream country college. Zenius has become the leading online educational platform in Indonesia, which offers learning materials for elementary, junior high, high school, UTBK preparation, independent exams, to professional upskilling/reskilling," said Zenius Management in a written statement in Jakarta, Thursday, December 4, 2024.

From the middle to the end of last decade, online bimbel applications were popular with students. Applications such as Zenius and Ruangguru are the prima donna. The existence of this bimbel application is considered to have a positive impact because it helps people get practical tutoring.

Under PT Zona Edukasi Nusantara, Zenius is one of the big technology-based educational companies in Indonesia. Zenius provides educational access through video formats online through websites and mobile applications.

But the situation changed when the global economic situation was sluggish due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of businesses were affected, including those engaged in the startup sector. A number of applications fell. Ruangguru was even rumored to have fired hundreds of its employees to avoid bankruptcy.

Tekini, it was Zenius' turn to announce unpleasant news. Zenius stated that he had closed his business or stopped operating on January 4, 2024. This certainly provoked the response of netizens who had a number of memories with the application.

Using the zenius keyword, Netray Media Monitoring investigated the X social media timeline during the period 1 January 4, 2024. Netray wanted to see how netizens talked about when responding to the news that Zenius had stopped operating.

A number of statistical data from monitoring have been collected by Netray Media Monitoring, such as the number of netizen uploads, which amounted to 6,065. The impression on this upload reached 4,288 responses in the form of Reply, repost, and favorites. Potential keyword-related discussions can reach 61.9 million Indonesian X-language accounts.

The intensity of uploads containing keywords was observed to have jumped dramatically on January 4, 2024. Namely when Netray found that at least 5,854 uploads were made by netizens within 24 hours.

Padahl some time before, the number of netizens' uploads X was only around 100 uploads per day. Like on January 1, 2024, which was only 102 uploads.

This spike occurred on the day Zenius' management announced the layoff of online bimbel service operations, Netray reported.

Even though he was forced to close his operations, Zenius still received positive sentiment from netizen X. Found 2,932 uploads with positive sentiment, compared to 1,505 uploads that tend to be written with negative sentiment.

"Meanwhile, when the intensity soared, 2,888 uploads were found with positive sentiment and 1,490 uploads with negative sentiment," Netray continued.

Of the thousands of positive sentiment uploads, most netizens expressed their gratitude to this online bimbel application for helping netizens achieve their academic dreams. Warganet also did not forget to address their gratitude to the startup founder, namely Sabda Putra Subekti on the @sabdaps account.

Because of the many words, Sabda's X account is a person entity that is often called a netizen. Based on the Top People summary, the @sabdad account is in third place with 417 mentions.

The first order is occupied by the @MikaelDewabrata account, a digital marketer who had made a thread on social media X which contained appreciation for Zenius' service.

But that doesn't mean Zenius' closure has no negative sentiment from netizens. Netray recorded 1,505 uploads identified as uploads with negative sentiment.

One of the main issues with negative sentiment is that netizens highlighted the termination of employment (PHK) of employees by Zenius' management. Media Assumption.co stated that the mass layoffs carried out by Zenius had occurred since 2022.

Zenius made his debut in 2004 in Indonesia. This means that this company has been operating for more than two decades. This company provides online educational services for various levels of students, students, and professionals.

Despite being a prima donna, Zenius has shown signs of difficulties in the last two years, which was marked by three layoffs. The first layoff occurred in May 2022 by deciding more than 200 employees, then the second round in August in the same year, and finally in February 2023.

After three dismissals, CEO Rohan Monga was appointed president Zenius, while the company reiterated Sabda Putra Subekti to the top position. Sabda was previously one of the founders and led Zenius before Monga, former COO Gojek, took over in 2019.

After layoffs, Sabda said the company was in a'stable' condition. He also said that the plan to penetrate the offline tutoring was to revive his luck, by acquiring Primagi in February 2022.

Zenius, founded by Sabda and Medy Suharta in 2004, managed to raise US$20 million or around Rp310.38 billion from several investors such as Northstar Group, Openspace, MDI Ventures, and Alpha JWC Ventures. The final round of funding will take place in March 2022.