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African ed-tech startup uLesson has secured $15 million in its recently completed Series-B round led by the Chinese multinational tech conglomerate Tencent and four other institutional investors.
uLesson is a leading home-tutoring platform founded in 2019 by Sim Shagaya, a 45-year-old Nigerian technopreneur and serial investor who founded Lagos-based e-commerce companies, such as DealDey and Konga.
Konga ranks as one of West Africa’s largest e-commerce websites.
According to TechCrunch, the $15-million round led by Tencent, Nielsen Ventures, TLcom Capital, Founder Collective and existing investors in Owl Ventures is the most significant disclosed investment in an African ed-tech startup by institutional investors.
The funding represents a strong endorsement for uLesson as a leader in the African home-tutoring business. The investment will bolster its operations in the harsh African market and secure a market-leading position in the region.
The capital commitment will open up new opportunities, as the ed-tech startup revealed that it will invest in product development, strengthen its core technology and add cohort-based learning features.
uLesson is available in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, The Gambia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, the United States and the United Kingdom. The investment will see the startup break into other market segments in Africa.
These new features will include flagship science and mathematics contents. It will also add social sciences and financial accounting to the secondary level content library and qualitative and quantitative reasoning to the primary level.
So far, the app has 2 million downloads, with more than 12.3 million videos watched and 25.6 million questions answered on the platform.
Before the investment, the startup had raised $7.5 million in a Series-A round that it completed in January. This takes its total capital commitment in 2021 to $22.5 million.
Shagaya, the founder and CEO, said the team is thrilled to achieve the significant milestone, which will bring high quality and affordable education to all Africans.
“We’re delighted to be joined by seasoned investors, like Tencent, who bring a wealth of experience from their investments in education technology. Backed by incredible partners, we can accelerate our learning to serve the African edtech market more effectively,” he said.
David Frankel, managing partner at Founder Collective, said he believes entrepreneurs can change the world and has every hope that uLesson will set new standards for education in Africa.
“The incredible talent on the continent has been held back for too long by a lack of opportunities. So I couldn’t be a more enthusiastic supporter of Sim Shagaya and his vision for more accessible and affordable educational opportunities for millions of people,” he said.
