DEMAND for virtual office tools from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. is surging as the world’s largest work-from-home experiment gets into full swing.

But there’s one surprising source of new users — the country’s teachers and students. With schools shut or delaying reopening to curb the spread of the virus, educators are increasingly turning to workplace technology, adapting it for instruction purposes.

Alibaba’s DingTalk is the most downloaded free app in China’s iOS App Store, followed by Tencent Conference. WeChat Work, which is also from Tencent, ranks No. 4. Their new-found popularity offers China’s twin Internet giants a chance to stake out an unclaimed multibillion-dollar arena.

DingTalk has been particularly swift in spotting the emerging need in the education sector. Last week, it rolled out a slew of new features for classroom settings, including live-streaming lessons that can have as many as 302 participants and an online testing and grading system. At least 50 million students from elementary to high school across China had signed up for DingTalk’s online teaching programs conducted in tandem with local education authorities as of Feb. 10, Alibaba said.

In response to the epidemic, Tencent has introduced a variety of initiatives to facilitate online education programs for teachers and minimize disruption to students’ learning, a spokesperson for the company said. In one recent update, WeChat Work made it easier for teachers to live stream in group chats.

A key appeal of DingTalk, Tencent Conference and WeChat is that they are powered by reliable cloud services as well as free, said Ye Le, a Shanghai-based analyst with China Securities.

(SD-Agencies)