Hello, and welcome to March’s European Edtech News!
The sad news of this month pushed the European Edtech Alliance (EEA) to quickly react to the war in the Ukraine by mapping initiatives across Europe that support learning and teaching for all Ukrainians. Beth Havinga, Managing Director of the European EdTech Alliance, urged haste - and a holistic approach - in the face of rising refugee numbers: "It's important that we have a broad range of offerings so that we can provide access to as many students as possible". Three-quarters of EdTechs in Europe have opened their portals for free during the pandemic, quite a few of them had run into economic difficulties because of this. "We know from the pandemic how important the social aspect is in learning. That's why you shouldn't just offer PDFs, but synchronous and asynchronous sharing."
Great examples of solidarity include Memby, who has turned around fast to support Ukrainian students with access to learning. The team has built a native solution, secured funding and partnered with Ukrainian schools that provide teachers – all in 1 week.
In Poland, The Ministry of Education and Science has introduced measures to ensure that Ukrainian students have the right to continue their education in a Polish schools. Every child between the ages of 7 and 18 can attend a Polish school. More infos here.
Other initiatives are to be found on the EEA Ukraine support database here. If you know an organisation providing services or products to support learning for Ukrainians please fill in this form.
Educapital, the French EdTech impact fund announced a first closing of 100M€ for its second fund, Educapital II raised through Bpifrance, Hachette Livre, BNP Paribas Innovation, Arkea, Matmut and other investors 🚀
The fund has accumulated 22 investments in 4 years of existence, two recent exits (AppScho acquired by Ready Education, and Lalilo acquired by Renaissance), and an average of 56% annual growth for the companies in its portfolio. Read the Sifted piece covering the launch of their second fund here.
Brighteye Ventures released another of its great reports, this time on “how to prepare a Seed or Series A funding round”. To be found here.
Raising VC funding can feel like an uphill battle, this guide has been created to help founders raising a round, including what to nail before you raise, timelines, how to approach funds, your materials, inc. deck and the typical process. 🙏
Last week, our managing director Beth Havinga represented us at the European Commission's #Digitaledforum speaking with Commissioner Mariya Gabriel and a wonderful panel, and advocating for the European Edtech ecosystem and the 2400 Edtech organisations we represent.
We presented the document, "Time for Action: Making Edtech a key driver in the European digital education ecosystem" that you can access and read here.
In it, we outline the key challenges our Edtech communities face and some of the ways we can come together to ensure that future innovations can be sustainably supported and bold new visions for education implemented.
This month, we celebrated International Women's Day. At this occasion, Svenia Busson, first chair of the European Edtech Alliance, released an analysis of Edtech VC funds in Europe and how they were funding women (co)founded teams.
The article highlighted that:
👉 Educapital, Brighteye Ventures and Emerge Education backed the most women across Europe over the past 5 years
👉 Only 5% of managing partners of EU-based VC firms are women
👉 The investment patterns of VC firms investing in Edtech reflect the composition of their teams (with the exception of Emerge Education)
👉 Educapital is the only Edtech-focused VC firm in Europe led by female partners
Read more here.
To address the gender disparity in Edtech, the EEA launched its Female Edtech Fellowship to support our most promising female founders. Applications are now open for the second cohort starting in July. This month, their podcast series together with The Edtech Podcast by Sophie Bailey was launched.
The first two episodes are live!
1️⃣ Hear Svenia and Beth (Managing Director of the EEA) discuss about Female-Led EdTech Innovation here.
2️⃣ Hear two Female Edtech Fellows, Nele Mletschkowsky, CEO of Quofox and Riccarda Zezza, CEO of Lifeed discuss about the Lifelong Learning Revolution here.
We’d also like to share two opportunities for early-stage founders:
The Transcend Fellowship supports early-stage founders building the future of learning and work to find product-market fit and connect with the most global founder community in the space. They have supported over 145 founders from 35 countries, who've gone on to raise $90M in funding.
Founders can learn more about the Transcend Fellowship and sign up to the waitlist at https://www.transcend-network.com/fellowship.
Are you an early-stage EdTech founder? Meet the EdTech Garage - a network for early-stage European EdTech startups to help you navigate the ecosystem of trade associations, accelerators, events and investors with confidence.
As always we would love to hear your feedback on this newsletter, so do comment below. Please also share it with your networks and across social media. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter here.
Produced by the team at the European Edtech Alliance.
NEWS FROM OUR MEMBER ASSOCIATIONS
FUND-RAISING
Perlego, an online library that provides students with unlimited access to over 650,000 academic titles with built-in learning tools, announced the close of a $50M in Series B funding round.
Italy’s edtech player Epicode School has joined hands with the U.S. and Berlin-based Strive School to rebrand itself as Epicode and raise €10 million funding. The tie-up will create a career acceleration platform for the tech sector, with an initial focus in Europe.
Spain-based Sesame HR, raised a 10M€ Series A to centralise employee management.
Invivox raises a 7M€ Series A to provide continuous medical training suited to the needs and constraints of healthcare professionals around the world.
Your Juno receives close to 2M€ to help close gender gap in financial education.
Chatterbox raised 1.9M€ for its smart online language learning platform for professionals, powered by refugee talent.
French Edumiam raises 1M€ to better train early childhood professionals.
CoderBlock, an online platform dedicated to creating immersive virtual experiences within interconnected 3D metaverses raises €800k through its crowdfunding campaign.
sAInaptic - an automated revision, learning, and assessment platform from the UK raised its seed round with Brighteye Ventures (undisclosed amount)
K-12
Sdui acquired Swiss company Pupil AG & Belgium’s Konecto to form the Sdui Group.
The UK Department for Education has published its Schools White Paper: “Opportunity for all: strong schools with great teachers for your child.” Read more here.
Laboratories of the Future reaches the next stage of its programme. The initiative, pushed by the Polish Ministry of Education and Science and the GovTech Center at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister will allocate more than 1 billion PLN to equip Polish elementary school with modern equipment to develop digital competencies, such as 3D printers, microcontrollers, robots or audio-video equipment. More here.
HIGHER ED
The French M6 TV Group and Studi (the EdTech company part of private higher education giant Galileo Global Education) announced the launch of Academee, the school of talents. Academee offers 100% online courses, from cooking to fashion, with flexible durations and delivering degrees.
Dutch edtech Studocu acquired Germany-based startup Studybees, founded in 2013. Both companies are edtechs founded by students for students.
Paragin, a leading Edtech software company based in the Netherlands that provides solutions for skills development acquired leading mathematics software specialist SOWISO. The acquisition is backed by software investor Main Capital Partners. More here.
US-based Course Hero, an online learning platform, announced that it has acquired Amsterdam-based Scribbr, an Edtech platform that provides multilingual proofreading, editing and citation service for academic writing.
CORPORATE & ADULT LEARNING
Online learning platform GoodHabitz acquired Helpr, a software solution for conversational learning. Helpr’s AI-powered chatbots use automated dialogues to increase learning engagement.
Louise Rowland, deputy CEO of Ufi (VocTech Trust) explores how technology has a key role to play in helping level up adult learning. Read more here.
OTHER MEMBER UPDATES
Don’t miss the EdTech Incubator Gala from the Helsinki Education Hub. This online event is on 31st March and you can sign up here.
The City of Helsinki launches a trial project seeking companies to develop ethical AI solutions in support of “personalised learning processes and individualised learning materials.” (More here)
EdTech France, EY Parthenon and the French Public Bank (Banque des Territoires) have released a new market study of the French Edtech industry with 2021 figures. In 2021, the French Edtech ecosystem has generated more than 1 billion euros in revenues, and represents more than 500 Edtech companies. (More here)
SuperCharger Ventures has announced the 13 startups participation in its cohort 4.0. Very strong lineup from around the world, details can be found here.
Thursday, 31st of March is Demo Day for SuperCharger Ventures Incubator Cohort 1.0. The event will be online, please register here.
Barcelona-based Edutech Cluster announced its EdTech Congress Barcelona, which will take place the 27th & 28th April 2022 in Barcelona city. Save the date and register here.
EdTechXEurope, with whom we are partnering this year, is currently running the 10th edition of the All Stars Awards. A great opportunity to see who’s shaping the future of edtech with previous winners including Kahoot!, Kognity, Busuu, OpenClassrooms and FutureLearn.
This year the focus will be on three categories: start-ups, scale-ups and ESG & Impact. Apply before 30th April here.
This newsletter is written and produced by the European Edtech Alliance. The European Edtech Alliance is a consortium of national trade associations and clusters working with founders and providers of education technology (Edtech), to support the domestic and international growth of these businesses and the innovations they represent.