🚀 This Week in EdTech 🚀 (Issue #29)

18 Jul - 24 Jul 2022

💥 Global EdTech 1000: Applications for the 2022 Global EdTech 1000 are now open and will close 31 July 2022. Regional lists will be announced at HolonIQ’s Global Summits around the world, September to November 2022

Every year, HolonIQ’s Education Intelligence Unit identifies the top 1000 EdTech startups around the world. The global 1000 is built region by region from over 10,000 nominations, applications and screening to ensure the global cohort is diverse and to shine a light on the inspiring innovation happening all around the world. Find out more here

 

Notable raises

Workforce:

💰 15five raised $52m. 15five helps motivate teams and improve performance management for execs overseeing those teams. The startup serves 3,400 companies — customers include Credit Karma, Spotify and Pendo

💰 Korean startup Yanadoo raised $18m. Yanadoo has diverse businesses in the education space and also provides a metaverse-centered exercise solution. In the first half of this year, the company achieved sales of $36m. Yanadoo wants to complete its pre-IPO fundraising and promote listing in the latter half of next year

💰 Pintarnya, an Indonesia-based job platform focused on blue-collar workers, raised $8m. Since its launch in May, the platform has connected more than 6,000 employers with over 100,000 job seekers, covering sectors such as F&B, retail, logistics, and hospitality

💰 Salt Lake City-based Brite raised $7.8m. The software company has built an employee benefits software platform for insurance carriers, brokers, benefit providers, and HR teams. Brite has impacted over 1 million employees and more than 1,000 employer groups.

💰 Blockchain job screening tool Veremark raised $8.5m.  Headquartered in London, Veremark’s software lets companies run background research on potential hires. It then creates a “career passport” that stores job credentials on the blockchain. Its software is used by notable companies such as Wise, PepsiCo and BCG. The company says its revenue has grown by 300% since September last year.

💰 Humanity Health, the career acceleration and talent sourcing platform for underrepresented leaders in healthcare and life sciences, raised $6m. Through the Humanity Talent Network, each member is matched with their own executive career strategist and delivered opportunities such as board positions, executive roles and investor introductions

💰 Passionfruit, a London, UK-based GenZ freelancing platform, closed a seed round of $4.3m. Since launch, the company has gained hundreds of specialists and customers across the EU, UK and US

 

Higher Ed:

💥 Deal News: upGrad, Asia’s largest integrated higher Edtech major announced a 100% merger of Harappa Education at a value of $38m

💰 Geekster raised $1.26m. Geekster aims to focus on developing programming skills in students. The startup claims not to charge any fee from the student until they land a well-paying job

K-12:

💰 Singapore startup Creative Galileo secured $7.5m. The company keeps children engaged in online learning content by adding in their favorite cartoon characters. The startup’s consumer acquisition cost has been less than two cents, and as a result they claim they have a lot of buffer capital and long runway to the next raise

💰 India based xQ, an edtech startup that teaches young people how to make videos, raised $1.4m. So far, The startup has so far educated 6,000 students across eight countries

💰 Edutainment firm Seekho raised $470k. The startup aims to create an entirely new category of education content by mixing instructive content with entertaining bite-sized movies, essentially creating “Netflix for learning”