There are two major problems in the edutech market.
Both are solved by ccFOUND.
What is the edutech market?
Online learning with its huge marketplace, referred to as edutech took off like a rocket! Basically edutech is based on technology and its developers, startups and firms, and its unlimited field is simply education.
Paradoxically, the jet fuel of this rocket was the the covid19 pandemic, certainly one of the greatest difficulties of the 21st century. The digitization of science would have proceeded at snail speed, if education hadn’t been sent into isolation. Before the pandemic, It was one of the least visited markets by investors, as well as the most resistant and conservative.
It took a globally acknowledged virus for as much as $10 billion of investment funds in 2022 to go towards companies developing school ebooks, coaching, tutoring, the e-learning software and the endless innovative educational products, such as virtual reality.
Before our eyes, digital education has become a mega-business and experts estimate that by 2025 the edutech market is expected to be worth roughly $305 billion dollars.
This means big potential profits for investors who understand how this market works.
What is worth knowing?
FIRST EDUTECH ACES
In the first year of the pandemic as many as 13 edutech unicorns were launched, including Brainly from Poland, currently focused on expansion in the USA and Asia, where the demand is the most prominent.
The undoubted leader from Poland was founded in 2009 and came up with something simple, solving problems related to school education for children who needed help with their studies. For this reason, the portal has gained so much popularity. The portal categorized school subjects, seemingly nothing big, but 1 million users registered every month, and only in Poland.
The universal solution worked well also outside of Poland. The launch of the Russian version turned out to be equally successful. It confirmed that Brainly can operate successfully in many different markets and languages. Since 2012 the brand has been introduced in the USA, South American countries, Turkey, Portugal, India and Indonesia.
Another example of a market mega launch worth seeing was the controversial project from Poland — Novakid, founded by Max Azarov in Krakow. It launched in late 2017 and has had three seed investment rounds of over $3 million. Unfortunately, the last round involved funds from Russia (LETA Capital) and Russian BonAngels, registered in South Korea. Novakid went through two more rounds, in which many more entities got involved, although none from Poland.
In the A round another Russian fund Xploration Capital took part, as well as Russian VC entities from Hungary PortFolion, Great Britain TMT Investments and the United States, but also with Russian capital LearnStart, Goodwater Capital. At the last stage in round B, conducted in August 2021, the startup raised as much as $35 million, and then the American fund Owl Ventures joined.
What is striking about Novakid is the difference in the upside in Series A and Series B investments, with the implication that investors either appreciated the startup’s potential or saw other market opportunities, like speculative ones.
The value of edutech companies in Europe has grown to $20 billion and is expected to triple by 2027, a 14% annual growth rate.
We’re talking about powerhouses like Photon, Skriware, Funtronic, BeCreo, Revas, Coders Lab, NovaKid, Nuadu and many others. These are young startups: Explain Everything was founded in 2011, Skriware in 2015, and Novakid in 2017.
The world record was broken by India’s ByJu’s and China’s Yuanfudao. The former, founded in 2011 in Bangalore is worth $16.5 billion and is among the top five richest companies in India. Education portal Yuanfudao, on the other hand, is valued at $15.5 billion and another Chinese startup Zuoyebang is worth $10 billion.
It makes your head spin when you look at these numbers that you don’t want to believe…
Isn’t this by any chance the first and last flight of this rocket? That’s the number one question.
There are always two sides to everything, the less interesting side raises the question, is the growth of edutech short-lived, and will everything soon return to how it was before?
The possible return of the growing trend is seen in the low consciousness of teachers in e-technologies and IT innovations. Many innovative solutions are used during classes, when they are conducted by a passionate teacher, who infects others with their passion for a certain app or platform.
When a person like this is missing at school, it is very doubtful that such solutions will be implemented. Teachers with a digital barrier, who were not proficient with technologies, were afraid to ask students for help, because in the old structure of education it was a psychological challenge. That’s why they wanted so badly to go back to the pre-pandemic system.
The second problem of the edutech market is knowledge verification. That’s a challenge not only for the teachers.
Access to knowledge from the Internet is a revolutionary change, but the vast amount of data on the Internet requires the ability to distinguish true, reliable and scientifically proven information from distortions, simplifications and even fake news.
How to be sure that what we read is authentic and true? Did the author of the published content verify the factuality, which is a very important feature for children of the Internet age.
How to be sure that the content recommended to students or a new application meets the standards of wisdom and does not make shortcuts, rewrites?
There are various sources on the Internet — more or less reliable. When Brainly started several years ago, there was no awareness that the Internet would be full of ambushes. Today, the notion of Internet wars is a standard that even the brightest minds can’t handle.
These two problems have been tackled by ccFOUND, a high-tech startup from Poland. Their portal allows experts and ordinary people with experience, to share knowledge, answer queries and thus generate data arranged in a comprehensive knowledge bank. It is based on blockchain technology, which ensures the authenticity of authors advice and makes it impossible to manipulate the content. There is no question of avoiding responsibility for mistakes.
The result? — Proven and prioritized content with the highest credibility factor appears in the ccFOUND search engine.
ccFOUND is another Polish treasure that was created to verify online knowledge through the verification system “truth algorithm operation” entered in the recognition of the content that comes out in the first place, with no advertising allowed and no marketing for objective reasons.
Instead, there is solely knowledge and wisdom in its own right. This is a challenge for the entire platform community.
The platform has also faced the challenge of making life easier for users with a technological barrier. First of all, the accounts are free of charge, so people do not have to set up their own web pages to create them and pay for them. ccFOUND has made it easier for them and supported their web appearance by the categorized knowledge, according to the tags mostly used by people, which helps to understand what is in vogue. It helps ordinary people to monetize their knowledge, tutoring or lessons and provides them with a user-friendly interface that looks like Facebook known by absolutely everyone.
It has a system of bonuses, rewards, and ranking.
It has its own tokenization, which means it is possible to earn and exchange tokens for fiat currency, like euros or dollars.
The portal likes to name itself revolutionary, because it will put the Internet in order. Piotr Michalak who is the CEO is a visionary, a young Polish millionaire. Since the age of 18 he has been earning money on knowledge, including the innovative cryptocurrency market, he is also a business coach. Coworkers refer to him as “a damn honest man”.
The platform also has its own judiciary, multi-tiered, to resolve disputes.
Soon the premiere of this portal, that is open to all. Already the first categories have appeared and beta testers have been applied.
It works and brings satisfaction. Everything is well thought out. Everything works!
The new “Unicorn” has obtained 22 million PLN of funding to complete the technology and is going hard in the commercialization of the product.
We should keep our fingers crossed that the ccFOUND portal will bring Polish technical know-how into the world again. And its creator, Piotr Michalak? Is he going to be the next Steve Jobs? Anything is possible in this world. If this happens, it speaks well of us, it is wisdom and good for all.
Alexandra
