Polish education technology startup Brainly has raised $30 million (€26.9m) in a Series C funding round led by Naspers. The round was also participated by Runa Capital and Manta Ray.
The peer-to-peer learning network company plans to use the investment to push deeper into the US market.
Founded in 2009, Brainly provides a platform where middle and high school students can ask each other for homework help. It has 150 million users, mainly in the US, India, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey, Brazil and Poland.
The Krakow-based company is one of a number of startups that wants to be at the forefront of disrupting the $250 billion global education market. “Our big belief is that education is a market that has yet to be disrupted by technology,” says Michal Borkowski, chief executive and co-founder of Brainly.
Around 10-15% of US middle and high school students currently use Brainly, but Borkowski is keen to extend this dramatically. He says,
“We really want to double down on the US market now. Our goal is to extend…access to every one of the 76 million US students and beyond, giving them the resources and the tools to succeed and inspire collaborative learning. This funding allows us to do just that.”
Brainly has plans to generate revenue and is working on testing product and trying to understand what makes parents willing to pay for their service.
“We are still early in our monetization plans, and we are working on understanding the parent market. We are doing a lot of product testing and trying to understand what makes them willing to pay for the service. The funding will let us go faster on that.”
While European edtech fundraising pales in comparison with Asian rivals, Borkowski says he is not concerned about competition. He points out that the global education market has plenty of space saying “There are about 1 billion students worldwide, plus their parents and teachers, so all together it is an area important to at least half of the global population. It is a big opportunity.”
Meanwhile, the latest funding round brings the amount raised by Brainly to $68.5m (€61.5m) making it the second best-funded edtech company in Europe. Hope, the latest investment will enable the company to expand further in providing resources and tools to the learners.
