Lingokids, the Madrid, Spain-based (and U.S. incorporated) edtech startup that helps children to learn a second language, has bolstered its balance sheet. The company has raised $6 million in Series A funding, and been awarded a $1.3 million grant from the European Union’s taxpayer funded H2020 programme,
Leading the Series A is HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, with participation from existing investors JME Venture Capital, Sabadell Ventures, Big Sur Ventures, and Gwynne Shotwell (President and COO of SpaceX). A number of new investors joined, too, including Silicon Valley ed-tech investor Reach Capital, Athos Capital, and All Iron Ventures. It brings total funding for Lingokids to over $11 million in the last year.
Meanwhile, I’m told a lot has happened since the startup’s last funding round a year ago. The team has grown to 40-plus employees, and the platform now counts a user base of over 7 million registered families around the world in 180 countries.
Notably — and presumably after finding market fit — Lingokids has also decided to focus only on English language learning (it had previously ventured into simplified Chinese and had plans to add Spanish). However, its central proposition remains the same.
The subscription-based platform teaches English to children ages 2 to 8 through a series of activities, games, and songs that adapt in difficulty to each child’s level. This, Lingokids maintains, allows for a fun and personalized learning experience, with an emphasis placed on parental involvement, which is key to language learning outcomes.
To that end, Lingokids says it will use the new capital for three main purposes: accelerating growth, acquiring new talent, and developing new features for the app. This includes plans to offer an “even more personalized experience for students and to increase parental involvement in the learning process,” which will see the startup revamp the app’s parent section, and provide new types of interactive content formats. The platform will also add improved speech recognition features.
“There is a growing interest in English language learning in early childhood, with market figures suggesting that at least 500 million children under the age of 8 will be learning English by 2020,” says Cristobal Viedma, Lingokids founder and CEO, in a statement. “We will continue to satisfy this demand and tackle English literacy around the world by offering high quality educational content at an affordable price.”
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