🚀 This Week in EdTech 🚀 (Issue #27)

4 Jul - 10 Jul 2022

💥 HolonIQ released their Global EdTech 2022 Half Year Update which highlighted the following:

⚡️Edtech venture funding for H1 reached $11.4bn with HolonIQ forecasting $17bn for the full year, which would still be the second strongest year on record (peak year 2021)

⚡️Very strong Q1 of venture funding with Q2 transitioning to less funding in a slightly lower number of rounds, until June closed the half with another burst of mega rounds

⚡️ USA forecasted to remain single biggest market, although down on last year

⚡️ Europe and India on track for new (or equal) highs again

📚 The Economist’s article titled “Covid learning loss has been a global disaster” argues the learning loss due to covid has been a global disaster, hitting middle- and low-income countries particularly hard. It also stated that:

⚡️ The share of ten-year-olds in middle- and low-income countries who cannot read and understand a simple story has risen from 57% in 2019 to roughly 70%

⚡️ Over two years >150m children have missed more than half of all in-person schooling

⚡️ The World Bank estimates the disruption could cost children $21trn in future earnings 

🌏 If your EdTech startup is looking for global market exposure, apply for the GESAwards 2022 here

Notable raises

Workforce:

💰 Finnish company Happeo landed $26m to provide a central intranet portal for employees. Happeo has over 366 customers including Pinterest, Decathlon and Marqeta

💰 ACTO, the omnichannel learning and enablement platform for life sciences, announced the closing of $18m. ACTO continues to experience robust user and revenue growth, including a 500% increase in ARR since 2018

💰 AntWalk raised $7.5m. The startup is an e-learning company that helps organizations accelerate and transform their learning and development (L&D) model. The company caters to banking, financial services, insurance and healthcare sectors

💰 Polish startup The Village secured $3.5m to redefine early education through its childcare marketplace. It’s an end-to-end solution supporting parents in solving the difficulty of finding high-quality child care through technology, content and community

💰 India-based GrowthX, a social learning startup, raised $1.5m. The company saw participation from 200+ founders, leaders and operators across companies like Razorpay, Airbnb, Mamaearth and Freshworks. 65% of the funds were raised from GrowthX’s own community members

💰 Lightbulb.ai, which positions itself as an emotion AI and engagement analytics platform, raised $1.5m. From analyzing user engagement during live meetings and calls to researching the emotional impact of pre-recorded content and asynchronous user experiences on consumers, it offers solutions that cater to industries such as online learning, sales enablement and consumer research

💰 India's first digital education platform focusing on varied design verticals, The Designer's Class raised $1m. The Designer’s Class's mission is to democratize design education, making it accessible, affordable and engage-able to everyone

K-12 and Higher Ed:

💰 India based Gurusiksha secured $60k pre-seed investment. Gurusiksha is an online tutoring and mentoring platform where students get step by step guidance from teachers