Prosus leads R5.3-billion funding round in GoStudent

Austria-based education technology start-up GoStudent has raised €300-million (R5.3-billion) in a new round of funding, led by Naspers’s Prosus, to expand and make acquisitions.

The fundraising values GoStudent at €3-billion (R53-billion), the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Prosus, Naspers’s Amsterdam-listed spinoff, led the round, and other investors included Deutsche Telekom, SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund 2 and Tencent Holdings.

CEO Felix Ohswald said the company could do deals for content providers, and may consider an initial public offering in the next couple of years.

“The market will shift more and more towards online tutoring because of the convenience and quality you can assure,” he said in an interview.

Ohswald said sales rose 700% last year to about €30-million in monthly bookings as students returned to classrooms following shutdowns due to the pandemic.

GoStudent now has raised more than €590-million since it was founded in 2016. It offers online tutoring focused on schoolchildren from play school to year 12 across 22 countries.

EduMe investment

At the same time as the GoStudent investment, Prosus has announced that it has led a US$20-million (R312-million) series-B funding round in London-headquartered EduMe, a mobile-based training platform for the “deskless workforce”.

EduMe provides access to education and knowledge for remote and deskless workers, Prosus said.

“The new funding will allow EduMe to step up investments in product innovation and development, strengthen its leading position in on-demand workforce training, as well as expand its availability to even more deskless verticals in its core US market and globally.”  — Ivan Levingston, (c) 2022 Bloomberg LP, with additional reporting (c) 2022 NewsCentral Media