Millions of children are settling into their first weeks back in the classroom, and parents everywhere have let out a collective sigh of relief. As many investors spurn startup pitches for back-to-school meetings and parent-teacher conferences, it seems that VC’s have remembered the importance of the education market. Over the last week, venture rounds in education startups doubled as companies from across the globe raised just over $10.5M.
Newsela of New York raised the largest round with a $4.1M Series A led by Owl Ventures with participation from Kapor Capital, NewSchools Venture Fund, Cambridge Information Group and the Knight Foundation. Newsela’s app tailors relevant news stories for K-12 reading levels. Similarly, InsaneLogic of London raised fresh funding from Ananda Ventures for its MyChoicePad early childhood language development app.
Rockit Online, based in Hanoi, also raised a $500k seed round from Silicon Valley investors Learn Capital, John Katzman and Formation 8 to bring quality online classes to Vietnam, and eventually greater Southeast Asia. The round puts Rockit in good company, as Katzman and Learn Capital recently teamed up on a Series A for EdSurge. According to Graph Insights, the three backers for Rockit have already accumulated extensive edtech portfolios, including EdModo, Coursera and AltSchool along with several dozen others.
Focusing on adult and professional education, StudyTube of Amsterdam and Startup Institute in Cambridge both raised funds this week as well. StudyTube’s €1M round was the second from HENQ Invest to build ‘the Netflix for company training’. Startup Institute’s $3M round from Silicon Valley Bank is aimed to further expand their immersive career accelerator, which previously spun out of the Techstars Boston program.
Finally, Experifun from Bangalore took an additional round from education giant Pearson via their Affordable Learning Fund. As edtech startups have emerged to try to steal lucrative market share from the conglomerates, giants like Pearson and McGraw-Hill have responded by putting money into their vertical in hopes of keeping pace.
The curated web market had the second largest rounds increase for the week, with 12 rounds totalling over $131M globally. Quikr India, from Mumbai, raised the largest curated web round in a $60M Series G to follow up on a $90M Series F in March. The latest round was led by Tiger Global and involved seven other investors including eBay. Seattle-based home improvement startup Porch also raised a $30M Series A from Lowe’s.
WebTeb (Amman), mana.bo (Tokyo), Compare Asia (Hong Kong), Four Eyes (Pasig, Phillipines) and TrustedCompany.com (Kuala Lumpur) represented over $10.6M of venture funding in Asia, in addition to Quikr’s $60M. In comparison, US curated web companies totalled $60.4M, including Porch’s big round, along with Trusper’s $16M Series B and Product Hunt’s $6M Series A.
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Photo via Flickr user flickingerbrad
