Klas, a Nigerian educational technology company, has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding led by Ingressive Capital, with participation from Techstars, HoaQ Capital, and several angel investors. Klas is a platform where users can develop and sell ebooks, courses, and live classes.
Klas, established in 2022 by Nathan Nwachuku and Lekan Adejumo, offers a range of features, including class scheduling, payment processing, community interaction, analytics, and video conferencing. It covers various subjects, including coding, design, finance, art, and languages. The startup’s mission is to empower everyone to teach engaging online classes.
Nwachuku’s journey inspired the formation of Klas. After losing an eye in an accident and skipping six months of school, Nwachuku wanted to start an online physics class. The challenges he experienced with existing platforms prompted him to create Klas as a streamlined solution. His commitment to establishing Klas led him to renounce a scholarship to Canada and drop out of college in 2021. Instead, he formed a partnership with his co-founder and CTO Adejumo. The platform’s development was followed by a $180,000 angel round, which launched Klas’ journey to Techstars the following year.
According to Nwachuku, Klas is comparable to Shopify in its aim. While Shopify gives an online platform for anyone to set up their stores and sell products, Klas allows its users to set up online schools and host classes.
Unlike other large platforms that primarily function as integration toolkits, Nwachuku further emphasized Klas’s focus on a closed ecosystem. While other platforms might use third-party offerings like Zoom or Google Meet for class experiences or Slack for class management, Klas has built everything from scratch, including its virtual classroom.
Nwachuku stated:
We don’t use Zoom or Google Meet; we built our tool called KlasLife, which doesn’t even use any video API. This was built from scratch and with a very unique video architecture.
The organization claims over 5,000 online schools (creators) that use its platform and have earned “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” It also has 300,000 students from more than 30 nations. Klas is part of a limited number of African entrepreneurs providing a global audience, yet most of its users are in Nigeria. To cater to its growing international audience, Klas currently accepts transactions in naira for Nigerian users and in dollars for its global users. This includes plans to introduce localized currency options in different countries as it focuses on expanding its presence in India and North America.
Following the current investment, Sunil Sharma, Managing Director of Techstars Toronto, expressed his satisfaction in supporting Klas from the beginning and in the co-founders’ skills. He explained his confidence in the platform by making a subsequent investment.
Klas, which offers a free plan with a 5% transaction fee, intends to support up to 100,000 online schools worldwide by 2027. While positioned as a cost-effective alternative to platforms such as Kajabi and Thinkific, Nwachuku suggested that Klas may launch a premium enterprise package priced at $199 per month to reskill staff in large corporations.
