Ringle English Education Service (Ringle), a South Korean online English learning and teaching platform, announced it has raised $8.9 million in a new funding round.
The Series A funding round, which brings the company’s corporate value to $89 million, was led by Must Asset Management.
Started in 2015, Ringle provides a platform for teachers and students to teach and learn English for various purposes, such as for working or studying abroad, exam preparation, interview preparation, correct pronunciation, etc. It offers 1:1 video call English tutoring with courses designed by high-performing tutors and top university graduates. Ringle currently has over 500 tutors who attended prestigious universities from across the US and the UK, and more than 10,000 paying customers.
The platform offers 300 high-quality digital textbooks, educational webinars, online/offline career seminars on studying or working abroad, AI-based feedback reports, and more. Ringle allows learners to select a tutor who shares a common major, experience, or interest. The company’s 1:1 video learning and diagnosis system has been developed in collaboration with KAIST’s (Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology) HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) research team.
Ringle’s main target audience is the pool of domestic adult English learners and non-English-speaking office workers and higher education students. Recently, the company is also getting huge interest from a high number of junior students. With offices in South Korea and the US, Ringle currently provides its English education services across South Korea, the US, Japan, and Europe.
The Seoul-headquartered company plans to utilize its Series A funding to strengthen its lead within the EdTech market. It plans to intensively invest in highly proactive recruiting and service & content development within its US subsidiary, to further the advancement of its tutors, content, technology, and learning systems.
Ringle claims it continues to grow more than 300% year-on-year since its inception, mainly through strong word-of-mouth, advertising, and student testimonials. The platform also claims to have recorded over 50% repurchase rate from its users in 2021. Ringle intends to grow 5 times more year-on-year and surpass unicorn status to become a decacorn within 2 to 3 years. The company is expanding in all areas: from adults to juniors, from English to other subjects, and beyond Asia into the global market. It aspires to create world-class educational services by drawing upon the knowledge and insights of tutors from the US and UK’s top 30 universities.
