“Venture barometer” included EdTech in the TOP 3 most attractive sectors for investors in 2019. Educational technologies have gone ahead even of FinTech. In this article, we will talk about projects that have once captivated investors.
Online community “Znanija”
All market players can be divided into two clusters – online educational projects and startups, employing high-tech solutions. For companies from the first group, it is vitally important to discover a truthful business insight, so that they can offer potential customers the most efficient solution. In other words, make things easy for them.
Online community “Znanija” was created to help school children and often their parents to tackle difficulties in homework and test preparation. Having been in the market for 10 years, the global community brought together more than 152 mio users across the world (35 mio of them are Russian-speaking) to help each other in learning. It is suffice to post a question on the website or via the app, and help will come in a few minutes, giving the detailed explanations. To ensure all answers are credible, there is a three-stage moderation system, which consists of a computer algorithms, the community itself and expert moderators.
The startup skyrocketed because of accurate insight. The first million monthly unique visitors were attracted within the first year after launch. Since 2014, “Znanija” has been supported by the Russian investment fund Runa Capital, which invested in June 2019 together with Naspers and Manta Ray. The total amount of investment is $68.5 mio.
Platform “Touch Surgery”
The other EdTech-cluster – high-tech startups – is currently targeted on corporations, where managers are ready to invest in employees’ professional growth. There are several areas, where traditional education needs help of technological solutions to train high-class professionals. For instance, medicine.
“Touch Surgery” operates at the border line between MedTech and EdTech. A strong word “revolutionary” can be easily applied: cutting-edge technologies are used to train surgeons, such as AI and 3D-rendering, as well as cognitive mapping.
With the help of the platform doctors can access more than 300 simulations, which feature operations in real time from the first-person point of view. The simulations are overlaid with virtual instructions about the performed manipulations. In addition, the platform provides access to AI-powered video storage with a feature of analyzing surgical performance.
In 2017, the backers of Facebook’s VR-project “Oculus” financed the startup. The investments of $20 mio were aimed at developments in augmented reality field, designed to introduce new features to the platform. Despite the expensiveness, AR and VR technologies in such realms as medicine are promising as they allow to slash the costs of training.
Online trainings “Carriers Edge”
Another way to attract investors’ attention is to occupy a niche, where supply is significantly lower than demand. When it comes to EdTech, this niche is online courses for workers doing manual labor. Strong brands in this niche haven’t emerged in Russia yet, but there are foreign projects worth having a glance at. For example, “”Carriers Edge”” is a Canadian online training platform for drivers from the trucking industry.
According to the founders, the primary reason drivers skip classroom training is a fear of looking stupid in front of peers. The service not only offers the solution for this, but also places business at an advantage. Anymore there is no need to take drivers off the road so that they can attend a classroom training. The employees can participate in the online training when it suits them.
The company does not disclose amount of investments, but there is another indicator of the demand for the service – a wide community of alliance partners. It includes multinational insurers (such as Arthur J. Gallagher & Co), association partners and resellers. Educational content includes textual, visual and interactive materials, as well as tests. The online library has courses on various topics, such as transportation security.
The EdTech market is promising both for investors and entrepreneurs. The latter need to identify their target audience properly, understand the needs of clients and create a product that will offer a solution.
By Michał Gwiazdowski, Brainly General Manager, Poland, Russia and Romania