Nigerian Edtech Platform uLesson raises $7.5 million Series A Funding

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Sim Shagaya led company ULesson, launched into the market a few weeks before the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic. The Edtech startup, which utilizes SD cards as a low-bandwidth way to deliver content, noticed an emerging wave of smart devices were spreading in homes across Africa as students adapted to the remote education of today.

According to TechCrunch, uLesson has benefited from the overnight adoption of remote education. Its positioning as a supplementary education tool helped it surface 70% month over month growth, said Shagaya. The founder says that the digital infrastructure gains will allow them to “go online entirely by Q2 this year.” It costs an annual fee of $50, and the app has been downloaded more than 1 million times. The startup is already experimenting with live tutoring: it tested a feature that allowed students to ask questions while going through pre-recorded material. The startup got more than 3,000 questions each day, with demand so high they had to pause the test feature.

The ground became wet in a way we didn’t see before. It opens up the world for us to do all kinds of really amazing things we’ve wanted to do in the world of Edtech that you can’t do in a strictly offline sense.

Founder and CEO Sim Shagaya said.

A year after it raised a seed round of $3.1m, Nigerian Edtech platform uLesson founded by former Konga’s CEO Sim Shagaya, announced today that it has closed a $7.5m Series A round. The round is led by Owl Ventures, which closed over half a billion in new fund money just months ago. Other participants include LocalGlobe and existing investors, including TLcom Capital and Founder Collective.

Owl Ventures is honored to be partnering with uLesson for their Series A. The company has quickly grown into the premier platform supporting students in Africa and we are excited to support their global expansion, as they seek to empower students around the world.

Speaking on this funding round, Patterson says.

According to Sim Shagaya

  • “Our goal is that ten years from now, K-12 education on the continent will bear little semblance to what you see today. But it won’t just be different, it will be better on most dimensions and much more affordable.
  • “We also believe that the impact borne of the marriage of education and technology will be greater on the African continent than any other place in the world.”

Adedayo Laketu

Adedayo Laketu is a creative inventor who's interested in curating a New Age for Africa across all mediums.

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