Arkademi, a Jakarta-based edtech startup focusing on the learning and teaching of vocational skills, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from US-based VC firm SOSV to scale its operations.
Founded in 2017, Arkademi provides a massive open online course platform that helps people both learn and teach any certified vocational skill. It offers a wide range of high-quality course classes in various categories ranging from digital marketing, multimedia, entrepreneurship, technology, business, and finance. Arkademi delivers its learning courses online via recorded video. The startup also allows individual and partner institutions to open and commercialize their online classes and reach students across Indonesia.
Arkademi believes that humans need a new approach in learning to improve quality of life and competitiveness. It is, therefore, intended for adults of productive age by providing expertise-based online learning that can help them get the jobs they desire, develop their careers, and improve competitiveness. Arkademi’s learning method was developed to adjust to the user’s mobility behaviour both in terms of curriculum, teaching materials, and technology.
The startup plans to use the fresh funds to further enhance its product, hire new talents, and deepen its roots in the Indonesian market. Arkademi also plans to add 200 more courses and partner with 150 institutions this year. It currently offers 50 classes provided by 20 partner institutions.
Explaining the problem of high unemployment rate in Indonesia (currently 5%), Hilman Fajrian, Co-founder and Chief Executive & Technology Officer, Arkademi, said, “One of the main sources of this problem (unemployment) is limited community access to vocational education, which stems from inefficient implementations and high costs. This problem is what Arkademi seeks to tackle.”
The co-founder said SOSV’s resources will also help accelerate Arkademi’s growth to better serve the country’s 185 million working age population.
In addition to the funding, Arkademi said it will be joining MOX (Mobile Only Accelerator), an SOSV accelerator program focused on localization, optimization, monetization, and partnerships. The startup was previously part of AWS Edstart incubation program facilitated by Amazon Web Services Asia Pacific, and Y Combinator.
Img Src: Arkademi
