LabLabee, the world’s first hands-on labs platform for Telco Cloud, has received €1.4 million in a pre-seed round to support its long-term mission of democratising Telco Cloud by making training for those technologies more interactive, accessible, and affordable for everyone.
The funding round was led by Brighteye Ventures, one of the biggest EdTech VC funds in Europe, with participation from Accel Capital, Kima Ventures, and e& capital, the business pillar of e& (formerly known as Etisalat Group).
Many notable business angels such as Docker’s co-founder, Sebastien Pahl; Executive Telco Cloud Director at Nokia, Anne Tavares; Cisco Global Service Provider Innovation Lead, Patrice Nivaggioli; and Propeller’s CEO, Tambi Jalouqa; as well as multiple friendly angels coming from Telco, Investment, and IT, have also participated in the fundraise.
With the fresh capital raised, the company plans to improve the learner’s experience, boost the speed and delivery of its platform, and develop more labs for advanced technologies such as IoT, Edge Computing, and Network Slicing.
Co-founded by Samir Tahraoui and Mahfoud Sidi Ali Mebarek, LabLabee is an upskilling platform that allows telco operators, industrial companies, and training centers to insert practice into their training while cutting the costs of the process. Its challenges and learning paths are designed to provide the learners with practical real-world experience, maximizing the outcomes and improving the experience.
Sharing about the company and its vision, Co-founder & CEO of LabLabee, Samir Tahraoui, said:
“I believe that the future of telco networks will be open, elastic, and scalable. And with LabLabee, we are preparing the industry for this transformation through an immersive virtual hands-on platform with the purpose of making Telco Cloud technologies like 5G or OpenRAN accessible the same as we have with web technologies in terms of delay, procedure, and flexibility.”
Tahraoui further said:
“This round is a good milestone for us to continue designing and developing new lab technologies for our current and future customers.”
By providing accessible, hardware-free Telco cloud labs, LabLabee enables students to improve their learning experience and maximize its results, getting them ready for the industry’s transition to the cloud.
Commenting on the funding, Principal of Brighteye, David Guérin, said:
“The telco cloud market is under massive transformation, yet industry training has not kept pace. We truly believe in the founders’ ability to transform this overlooked market, by helping telco engineers to acquire new skills, upskill and/or reskill in a more efficient, cost-effective and engaging way.”
Over the past year, the startup has worked with eight worldwide official partners. Two of its partners are Setelia and TIP Academy, and these partnerships help to provide customers with the labs required to upskill teams efficiently. In addition, the platform is being used by many prominent enterprises and schools including Orange France, Togocom, and INSA Lyon.
Head of Corporate Venture Capital, e& capital, Kushal Shah, added:
“We believe in investing in the ideas that will progress a bright digital future by acquiring, growing and supporting visionary tech businesses. LabLabee has the potential to bring sweeping changes in the areas of innovation and digital disruption. In line with our ambitions of digitally empowering societies across the world, we stay committed to supporting such startups who are capable of transforming their novel ideas into the big businesses of tomorrow.”
At present, the firm has 13 labs and a total of 156 challenges in its catalogue for Telco cloud technologies including 5G, OpenRAN, SDN, and Openstack.
In the near future, LabLabee is also planning to expand its team as a part of the company’s goal to drive more innovation, opening up for more creative ideas and smarter solutions to current problems.
