Ebunoluwa Akinola
Edukoya, an online educational platform that provides African students and their parents with access to a network of high-quality educational options and authentic mentors, secured $3.5 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Target Global.
Participating in the panel for the online educational pre-seed funding are angel investors such as Shola Akinlade, co-founder and CEO of Paystack, Babs Ogundeyi and Musty Mustapha, co-founders of Kuda, Brandon Krieg and Ed Robinson, co-founders of Stash and Raffael Johnen—CEO of Aux Money.
Edukoya, founded by Honey Ogundeyi, a former Google executive in Nigeria, has launched into beta. Edukoya says it wants to empower students and parents to take control of their education by providing them with high-quality learning and educational materials and expert help.
The Edukoya platform is designed for Nigerian secondary school students. Specifically, the platform offers exam preparation and homework help; a question bank with step-by-step solutions; and personalised performance tracking systems.
The educational platform offers a free, supplementary learning platform, as well as subscription packages with premium features, focused on K-12 learning and exam preparation. This offering combination is expected to reduce the uneven distribution of quality education. The platform operates a 100% online model, which promotes self-paced learning that allows learners to save time and money.
“Our vision at Edukoya is to redefine online education for the next generation of Africans. Africa has the fastest-growing school-age population globally, with over 260 million students and counting,” Ogundeyi, who was also the founding CMO of Kuda Bank, said while speaking on the new investment. “Our goal is to democratise access and make high-quality instruction and content accessible and affordable to every student, regardless of where he or she lives on the continent.”
Target Global Director of Investments Lina Chong said that the company is delighted to lead this investment and partner with Ogundeyi and her team.”The company’s mission to provide better quality education to millions of African students and their ability to execute on this ambition left an immediate impression on myself and the whole team at Target Global,” Chong said.
The funding is the biggest pre-seed investment for African edtech and also the biggest investment raised by a Nigerian female founder. It plans to use the funds to go from beta to live launch in Nigeria by 2022. It will also accelerate its product and technology as well as expand its online educational curriculum, content coverage and on-demand tutoring feature for secondary school learners.
