Edukoya, a female-led and Africa-focused online learning platform, has raised $3.5 million in a pre-seed round led by Target Global. This is arguably the largest pre-seed round for an African EdTech platform as at press time.
Founded in May, Edukoya envisions a pan-African classroom that empowers parents, students and teachers by democratising access to high quality education and igniting a passion for lifelong learning, it launched in beta this December, to be fully unveiled in 2022.
Edukoya plans to use its pre-seed funds to go from beta to live launch in Nigeria by 2022. It will also accelerate its product and technology as well as expand its online curriculum content coverage and on demand tutoring feature for secondary school learners.
Honey Ogundeyi, Founder and CEO of Edukayo said, “[Edukoya’s vision] is to redefine online education for the next generation of Africans. Africa has the fastest-growing school-age population globally, with over 260M students and counting.
“Our goal is to democratize access and make high quality instruction and content accessible and affordable to every student, regardless of where he or she lives on the continent”, Ogundeyi added.
Prior to starting Edukoya, Ogundeyi in 2014 founded Fashpa, a Nigerian fashion e-commerce store. In her career, she has worked in consulting and managerial roles at McKinsey & Company, Ericsson, Google and UK-Nigeria Tech Hub. Ogun was also the founding CMO of Kuda,
Edukoya has a range of valuable features targeted at Nigerian secondary school learners including 24/7 Exam Preparation & Homework tutor help, a data driven question bank with step by step solutions and personalised performance tracking systems.
Currently, the platform is offers free, supplementary learning platform, as well as subscription packages with premium features, focused on K-12 learning and exam preparation. The learning experience is delivered through a 100 percent online model which promotes self learning and allows learners to save time, save money and get smarter.
High quality education is expensive and out of reach for millions of African learners. According to data from the World Bank, African households spend 20-25 percent of their annual GDP per capita on education.
According to Lina Chong, Investment Director at Target Global, “Edukoya’s mission to provide better quality to millions of African Students, combined with the team’s ability to execute on this ambition, left an immediate impression on myself and the whole team at Target Global. Their business has the potential to unlock learner potential and improve lives across generations”.
Other investors that participated in the round were including Shola Akinlade, CEO and co-founder of Paystack (acquired by Stripe); Babs Ogundeyi and Musty Mustapha, founders of Kuda; Brandon Krieg and Ed Robinson, founders of Fintech Stash and Raffael Johnen, CEO of Aux Money among other African and European founders.
