Help against educational gaps – the mega-business of learning from a distance
Gostudent founder Felix Ohswald
Those: Gostudent
The start-up Gostudent has developed a platform for digital learning. Schoolchildren and parents are enthusiastic, the company becomes Austria’s second “unicorn”. One reason for the success could be the failures of the past few months.
Gostudent shows where the ministers of education seem to fail: The Edtech start-up has developed a successful platform for digital learning. In online reviews, pupils and parents are enthusiastic about the services offered by the Viennese start-up.
In order to reach even more users in even more countries, the start-up has now raised new investor funds. As part of a Series C financing round, the Edtech received 205 million euros. The company valuation of the start-up rises according to its own information to 1.4 billion euros – Gostudent becomes a unicorn.
The Series C is led by the investor DST Global. In its portfolio, the VC lists the big names in the tech industry, including Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook. Gostudent now wants to benefit from this network.
Softbank, the Chinese tech group Tencent and the Californian investment company Dragoneer, which manages a billion-dollar fortune in foundations and family offices, have also joined the Viennese start-up.
Only in March of this year, Gostudent closed a Series B financing round and raised 70 million euros in the process. The existing investors Coatue, DN Capital and Left Lane Capital are also injecting money in the current round. So the list of shareholders is impressive.
From private tutoring to global player?
The founders Felix Ohswald and Gregor Müller are behind the start-up. The two of them launched the start-up in 2016 after Ohswald had to give his younger brother and his friends tutoring via text message. Today the digital learning platform is active in over 18 countries and no longer just offers a tutoring chat, but also provides individual digital lessons.
With the latest investment, Gostudent is the second Austrian start-up to achieve unicorn status. It wasn’t until March that the Viennese fintech Bitpanda managed to score billions.
For years Austria had hoped for a unicorn in the domestic start-up scene, now the neighboring country of Germany has two unicorns to show for it.
Hardly any money flows into edtechs
It is unusual for an education start-up to reach the billions valuation. There are comparatively few start-ups in the industry, investments flow mainly in the seed area.
According to the German Start-up Monitor 2020, a non-representative survey of founders and start-up employees, only around four percent of all start-ups in Germany are in the education sector. After all: Compared to the previous year, the industry recorded a relatively strong growth of 1.1 percentage points.
The conclusion is that the corona pandemic could have been the driver of the edtech upturn. According to Gostudent founder Ohswald, this did not initially play such a big role in his business.
“We had the impression that less performance is required in school. So tutoring wasn’t so important, ”says Ohswald. “Now we are recognizing the resulting educational gaps, and so many parents resort to tutoring to help their children catch up with what they are learning.”
According to the company, the start-up is growing by around 30 percent a month in terms of the number of lessons booked and the associated sales. More than 400,000 tutoring hours are currently booked via the platform every month.
At a price of around 20 euros per lesson, the company is likely to turn over around eight million euros a month with this alone. Ohswald does not give any specific figures.
The Edtech currently employs over 500 people. With the freshly collected capital, Gostudent wants to increase the team to around 1000 employees by the end of the year and make the leap overseas. Specifically, the market entry in Canada and Mexico are initially planned.
Next step: IPO
Gostudent’s ambitions are great, and founder Felix Ohswald has the necessary start-up ego. “We want to become the most successful Edtech in the world. And who says that we won’t soon be the first point of contact for a real digital school? ”He says. That is why the founder does not want to be satisfied with the investors’ money.
What was already in the room at Gostudent’s Series B should slowly become concrete: The Edtech is planning the IPO. The Austrian start-up plans to go public within the next two years. Personnel support for the next big step is already being sought.
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