Edtech marketplace Preply has secured an additional USD $35 million of funding, a sum that more than doubles its fundraising efforts since 2013. The round was led by Owl Ventures and Full In Partners, with participation from previous investors Point Nine Capital, Hoxton Ventures, as well as EduCapital, All Iron, Diligent Capital and Evli Growth Partners. Angel investors Niklas Ostberg, cofounder and CEO of Delivery Hero; Arthur Kosten, co-founder of Booking.com; Przemyslaw Gacek, co-founder of Grupa Pracuj; and David Helgason, co-founder of Unity Technologies are also participants.
This Series B announcement comes on the heels of an exceptional year for Preply with the number of active learners and tutors, GMV and overall revenues quadrupling across the board. One factor is the trend of e-learning adoption, already in motion and now accelerated by COVID-19 lockdowns. It also correlates with how Preply is combining it’s human-led approach with a proprietary curriculum product covering the full learning journey with AI-powered features. This technology has significantly increased the length of time each learner spends on the platform, resulting in a 16 per cent increase in purchased lessons per student.
Canada has become one of Preply’s biggest markets since 2008 with the largest cities for Preply usage being Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. English and French are by far the most popular languages, representing together 55 per cent of the learners. Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese are also getting more popular.
In addition, Canada is one of the most represented countries of birth among tutors teaching on Preply, as 90 per cent of them are teaching English or French. Though born in Canada, around 30 per cent of Canadian tutors are actually teaching from a different country, with the US, Mexico, Italy, Spain and Vietnam being popular places of residence.
“This new funding will help us tackle a variety of strategic priorities, as we plan to double our workforce across all divisions and locations,” Preply CEO Kirill Bigai said. “We’ll add more value for both students and tutors by improving support systems and amplifying the classroom and curriculum experience which has proved so valuable already.
“We also have big plans to build out our B2B business, which we expect to become a much larger proportion of our revenues in the coming years. As we secure our leading position in Western Europe and North America, we’ll be diversifying our media and marketing mix to build a globally-recognized brand.”
“As a firm dedicated to scaling transformative education companies, we are highly optimistic about the online language learning market which is estimated to be worth over USD 21 billion by 2024,” Owl Ventures principal Ross Darwin said. “We couldn’t be more excited to invest in Preply and are confident that they’ll capture a big piece of that pie”.
“We were impressed with Preply’s differentiated and highly scalable model for language learning,” Full In Partners cofounder and managing director Jessica Davis said. “We have spent a decade investing in edtech and marketplace businesses and Preply really stands out for its strong leadership, high-velocity growth, and greenfield market opportunity.”
