Scoodle, a London-based tutoring startup that connects students and teachers, has raised $760,000 in a pre-seed funding round to help tutors become influencers.
Investors participated in the round include Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Tiny VC, IFG Ventures, and a host of unnamed angels from Google, Miniclip, the University of Oxford and others.
Founded in 2017, Scoodle provides a platform that lets students post questions online to be answered by tutors who are seeking to boost their reputation in tutoring. It is almost like Quora. The platform facilitates tutors to showcase their talents by sharing answers and generate tutoring work. Students can book tutoring sessions on the platform with tutors that have impressed them. Tutors can also create their own comprehensive profiles and share learning resources as a further way of demonstrating their expertise, and in turn, garner more tutoring work.
Scoodle uses content as a key differentiator. It allows parents and students to assess a tutor before enquiring or booking a lesson.
Speaking about the company, Ismail Jeilani, Co-founder and CEO of Scoodle, told TechCrunch,
“It’s difficult to find good tutors, because parents don’t know what to look for. We solve this with a content-driven approach. Our tutors share content like learning resources on their profiles, which parents get to view before booking a lesson. Through this approach, tutors begin to develop their own brands, like an educator’s LinkedIn.”
The company hosts thousands of tutors from the UK’s best educational institutions, including the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and others. Interestingly, Scoodle is the first edtech company to join the University of Oxford’s accelerator, Oxford Foundry.
Scoodle operates like a content-led marketplace for tutor bookings, but unlike other tutoring marketplaces, the company currently doesn’t charge a booking fee. However, with user base grown to 100,000 across mobile and web, the company has now introduced a subscription model for its user base. Now, tutors pay £10 a month for boosted listings. The company claims this secures up to 30 times more enquiries. Scoodle has also introduced a subscription option for students whereby anybody can book, message and access tutor’s content for free. But a higher tier Scoodle Pro members can ask questions directly to tutors for a more on-demand service.
