The Chinese-English language barrier has allowed innovative companies to carve out niches in the language learning market. The arbitrage of English and Chinese, in particular, can be a lucrative practise.

One company that’s been doing this for awhile is Praxis, which runs Chinesepod out of Shanghai. Chinesepod is a podcast and website that teaches users Chinese. The podcast is free, but users pay a subscription fee for extra services. Fees start at US$9 a month for the basic package, which includes access to PDFs of dialogues, to US$200 for a year with all the bells and whistles, which includes daily practice phone calls from a Chinesepod staff member.

I’ve spoken to the Chinesepod team at their cool warehouse office near Xintiandi, and they say they’re profitable (but won’t disclose figures). They’re certainly enthusiastic about the possibilities of ‘language-casting’ (my shorthand for language learning podcasting… which is a mouthful) and have been chatting up partners and investors to expand their operations. (more…)