uLesson Secures $15m Series B Investment
The Nigerian ed-tech startup seeks to increase hiring across product, technology and operations to improve its services for its growing community of learners across Africa.
uLesson, the leading Nigerian education technology company, today announced it closed a $15M Series-B investment from Nielsen Ventures and Tencent, as well as existing investors, Owl Ventures, TLcom Capital, and Founder Collective. This is the largest investment in an African Edtech company.
uLesson offers a suite of educational products — a core curriculum video library, live lessons, and live personalized homework help — that provides holistic learning that is both interactive and tailored to the individual needs of primary and secondary school learners across Africa.
The startup has experienced a dramatic growth in its daily average users which increased 430% in 2021 and live lesson demand grew by 222% since their introduction in September. The uLesson app has been downloaded two million times; 12.3m videos have been watched; and 25.6m questions have been answered.
Online learning demand has only accelerated due to the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to enduring behavioral changes among African families. Families have embraced online methods as they have become more cautious in allowing tutors into the home. Uncertainty over future school closures has led to parents investing in smart phones for their children’s schooling. Roughly 50% of uLesson learners use their parents’ handsets.
With the capital, uLesson plans to continue to invest in product development, strengthen its core technology and add cohort-based learning features. Expanding on its flagship science and mathematics content, the company will add social sciences and financial accounting to the secondary level content library and qualitative and quantitative reasoning to primary level.
Sim Shagaya Founder of uLesson said: “We’re thrilled to achieve this major milestone which will take us further in bringing 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.”
David Frankel, Managing Partner at Founder Collective stated: “I truly believe entrepreneurs can change the world. At Founder Collective, I’ve watched Uber upend transportation, Coupang re-envision ecommerce, and I have 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.”