Ukrainian venture capital fund Genesis Investment has become a lead investor in the latest funding round initiated by Estonian education technology startup 99math, Genesis announced on Aug. 2.
The Estonian company has drawn a total of $1 million. The Genesis Investment provided the biggest share, however, it didn’t disclose how much exactly.
According to Forbes, Genesis invests on average $350,000 in a single tech startup. Managing partner at Genesis Elena Mazhuha told the Kyiv Post that the company expects to return its investment in 99math in 3-5 years.
Tallinn-based 99math helps children to learn math using online games. Apart from Genesis, the startup attracted money from Estonian fund Change Ventures, companies such as Bolt, Transferwise and Pipedrive.
The 99math plans to use new funds to develop a mobile game for students between the first and sixth grades to learn math at home.
More than 170 million math problems have been solved through 99math since its launch in 2019. The platform had 8,000 teachers from 106 countries as active users. As of January, 99math had 300,000 monthly active users.
Since 2019, Genesis has invested a total of $20 million in 24 startups. More than $5 million was invested in education startups since the company believes that “traditional education for children of all ages has become outdated.”
Aside from 99math, eight other ed-tech startups received investment from Genesis, including online courses for programmers Mate academy, AllRight website for learning English, and IntellectoKids, a platform for parents and primary school children.
Estimated at nearly $89 billion in 2020, the “ed-tech market continues to grow and educational businesses are becoming more profitable,” Mazhuha said.
Globally, the ed-tech market is expected to grow by 20% in the next seven years, boosted by the development of artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when schools and universities went online, the demand for educational technology surged prompting an investment increase.
U.S. online learning platform Coursera, for instance, went public amid the boom of digital education. Its revenue has grown by 59% in 2020, reaching $293 million.
