Bridging the ever-evolving tech landscape and need for innovation with the global impact of the pandemic, the Edtech sector has started to play an increasingly significant role in the learning process in recent years.
While physical attendance at schools and offices has already resumed, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of online education. As continuous tech advancements highlight the benefits of online learning, complementing traditional methods, it is no wonder that the education industry holds significant prospects for expansion.
European Edtech market trends
The value of the global Edtech and smart classroom market reached $116B in 2022, with projections to quadruple to $433B by 2030. Moreover, Fortune Business Insights further reports that approximately 3% of global education expenditure is allocated to digital infrastructure.
After an encouraging beginning to the year for the global Edtech sector, with a notable 40% funding increase in Europe during the first half of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021, the positive trends declined in line with broader trends in both public and private markets, Brighteye Ventures reports.
In the spectrum of global VC funding decline across major markets — Europe, the US, India, and China — throughout 2021, Europe’s Edtech sector demonstrated the highest resilience. Although European VC funding in 2022 experienced a reduction of 31% in comparison to the previous year, this decrease was notably less severe compared to other regions. The European Edtech sector still experienced substantial growth compared to 2020, with funding doubling from $0.9B to $1.8B.
While the UK, France, and Germany maintain their positions as leaders in the number of deals within the European Edtech landscape, the CEE region is in the process of strengthening its international market presence.
Following up on SEE Edtech solutions, The Recursive continues to feature a selection of rising Edtech startups in CEE – V4 region of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.
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5 Rising Edtech startups CEE to keep an eye on
Coding Giants
Established: 2015 – Warsaw, Poland
Founders: Piotr Pełka, Dawid Leśniakiewicz, Sebastian Langa, Radosław Kulesza
About: Coding Giants is a rising educational organization offering coding classes tailored to children and adolescents aged 7 to 19. The founders’ mission is to spark interest in programming among the youth. Coding Giants aims to highlight programming education’s potential and benefits, including financial rewards and enhancing logical thinking, creativity, patience, and problem-solving abilities.
Highlights: The startup currently offers courses remotely and in more than 120 locations in Poland and 14 other countries. In 2023, Coding Giants secured seed funding of €3.5M from PortfoLion Capital Partners and Nunatak Capital.
Readmio
Established: 2019 – Prague, Czech Republic
Founders: Jozef Simko, Ilya Novodvorskiy, Rado Rajcan
About: Readmio is a children’s app featuring a collection of stories. Utilizing voice recognition technology, the app enhances the reading experience as parents read stories aloud by seamlessly adding appropriate sounds. The app’s mission centers on facilitating meaningful parent-child interactions through engaging stories that nurture cognitive growth, imagination, and empathy.
Highlights: With over 200 stories available in English, Czech, and Slovak, Readmio was downloaded by over 140,000 users, resulting in nearly a million shared reading sessions. Readmio raised €1.1M in seed funding in 2023, backed by Zero Gravity Capital and DEPO Ventures.
Ineduco
Established: 2022 – Bratislava, Slovakia
Founders: Ivan Fratrič, Alexander Svetlik
About: Ineduco is an EdTech application aiming to enhance the university learning journey by digitizing learning materials and textbooks. The platform offers personalized tools such as note-taking, discussions, and a creative workspace, ultimately improving learning effectiveness. By adopting a subscription-based model, Ineduco provides universities and publishers with revenue diversification and addresses piracy issues while offering cost savings for students.
Highlights: Ineduco closed a pre-seed round earlier in 2023, raising €510K from Zero Gravity Capital.
Xeropan
Established: 2013 – Debrecen, Hungary
Founders: Attila AlGharawi, Ferenc Mile
About: Xeropan presents an engaging language learning platform with quests and daily lessons, promoting language fluency and confidence. The platform employs AI to provide learners with a personalized language teacher, correcting and motivating them throughout their journey. Additionally, Xeropan Classroom empowers educators by offering interactive exercises and video lessons, streamlining English lessons and progress tracking.
Highlights: The platform currently offers learning for English, German, Spanish, and French languages, recording over 1M users since its launch. The startup raised a €2.3M Series A round in 2020 from Bonitás Ventures and Hiventures.
Fluentbe
Established: 2015 – Warsaw, Poland
Founders: Miłosz Ryniecki, Jacek Perkowski
About: Fluentbe is an online language school offering both one-on-one and small-group sessions conducted by qualified instructors. The platform merges traditional educational benefits with modern technologies, with live classes led by selected teachers taking place in virtual classrooms. Students engage individually or in small groups through audio and video, encouraging a dynamic learning experience.
Highlights: The startup raised three seed rounds in the past. The last funding of an undisclosed amount was recorded in 2021 from Polish Black Pearls VC.
Note: The list features a selection of Edtech startups from the CEE – V4 region, focusing on various types of solutions in the industry. Please, feel free to contact us with updates or companies we should add: [email protected]
