Korean Edtech Startup Gguge Scores $10m in Funding
Korean K-12 edtech startup Gguge, heralded as one of the best online schools in Asia, announced that it has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round backed by Korea Investment Partners (KIP), Murex Partners, and PKSHA Capital from Japan.
The Korean startup is an education platform that offers online classes for students between the ages of 3 and 18. The platform encourages students to explore topics based on their interests by offering a selection of more than 5,000 online classes taught live via Zoom. Independent instructors engage the students with active learning methods that range from reading newspapers and solving puzzles, to incorporating Minecraft and Pokémon games into their classes.
For the past couple of years, there has been a significant shift in the way the world views the workplace and the classroom. Remote learning has experienced a spike in interest and edtech startups such as Gguge have been quick to realize its potential and jumped on the $254.80 billion global edtech market to capitalize their chance on its ever-growing possibility, according to the announcement.
Launched by its parent company, Glorang Inc in 2020, Gguge claims to now have over 100,000 users (about the seating capacity of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum) in Korea and are rapidly growing with a new user acquisition rate averaging more than 40% each month. As a strong contender in the substantial education market like Asia, the platform seeks to differentiate itself from ‘Outschool’ by providing its services in local languages. The company is expected to enter the Japanese and Malaysian markets by Q4 2022 and is planning to expand to Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam in the following years.
“The education market in the English-speaking and North American regions is undoubtedly exceptionally large. However, we at Gguge and Glorang understand that the local D2C education market of each country in Asia can be just as substantial,” Taeil Hwang, Founder and CEO of Gguge said.
Source: Asia Tech Daily (April 30, 2022)