Kinderpedia, the Romanian digital platform offering education management and communication solutions to schools and kindergartens, announced raising €1.8М in a new round led by Early Game Ventures (EGV) and joined by previous investors ROCA X, Growceanu, and business angels.
The news follows a fast journey of financing rounds, including a pre-seed and a seed round led by ROCA X in 2020, an equity crowdfunding campaign later in 2020, and a recent grant from InnovX BCR last month.
“Education is one of the vital systems of any country, with a fundamental long-term importance and an enormous impact at all levels of society. The development of digital infrastructure for education has a huge stake and should be a top priority. This is the way in which our investment fund analyzed this transaction and, from this perspective, EGV’s investment in Kinderpedia is part of our “Infrastructure for Innovation” thesis”, said Radu Stoicoviciu, partner at EGV, in the press release.
The new funds will serve Kinderpedia in continuing the scaling process across international markets, says Daniel Rogoz, CEO and co-founder of Kinderpedia. It also brings a new partner by their side and consolidates relationships with existing investors.
“This financing round is a result of our significant growth throughout the past year and it proves the confidence of our investors, both in the product as in the valuable impact in brings. To move forward, we need to become even more agile, to develop a flexible and responsive internal structure. Being as adaptive as ever and seizing opportunities as they arise will be the key ingredients of our future growth,” adds Daniel Rogoz for The Recursive.
Transforming education through technology
For schools and kindergartens in Romania, having education management and communication platform is not an exotic project anymore. When the pandemic hit, it exposed one of the biggest gaps in the local education system in Romania – the lack of digital capabilities and infrastructure.
“The need to connect through the use of technology has resulted in a greater openness to existing solutions. Innovation has enjoyed the chance to demonstrate its benefits, both in the actual act of teaching-learning, which must be reinvented and brought into the 21st century, and in simplifying administrative processes at the school level and in the relationship between teachers and families,” Evelina Necula, co-founder and CMO of Kinderpedia, told The Recursive earlier this year.
The way Kinderpedia managed to answer to the most urgent needs of educational institutions translated into a chance for the company to extend its impact by a factor of 10, from 20K users at the beginning of 2020, to a whopping 200K users today. To address the surge in demand, the company had to expand the server infrastructure and ensure the necessary training and technical support with limited resources. 2,000 schools and kindergartens across 14 countries and 15 languages now use the digital platform.
Kinderpedia is designed as complete education management and communication solution that can save schools and kindergartens between 6 and 9 hours a week of administrative time. In turn, this frees up time for teachers to focus on improving the teaching act.
In response to the transition to digital learning, the company started offering complete virtual classroom functionalities, from remote video teaching to tools for attendance monitoring, grading, homework, as well as storing and sharing documents. Kinderpedia also works as a native mobile app for both teachers and families, helping improve parental involvement in the education process.
Discussing the investment, Evelina said they are excited by the perspective of maximizing their impact in education within the region and beyond, as well as achieve the next level of growth with the right partners by their side.
“What excites us most, however, are the individual cases of teachers, students, families which we are helping take significant steps towards a connected education. We are dreaming of a thriving society, where education plays a significant role and digital technology provides the vital infrastructure to enhance communication, simplify administration and support progress. Studies show that decreasing functional illiteracy may result in a 200% economic growth and even 300% if we eliminate it completely. It is our strongest belief that edtech will be a central part of this process and Kinderpedia is ready to step in and lead the transformation”, Evelina told The Recursive.
