Nigeria’s edtech startup lands $1.6M expansion funding
Teesas, a Nigerian edtech startup company has secured a $1.6 million pre-seed funding to expand into the African educational technological market.
According to the Osayi Izedonmwen, the founder of Teesas, the startup was launched less than two months ago and has had a rapid takeoff.
“We started beta testing around August this year, and fully launched the android version in November. Already Teesas has over 150,000 downloads at the Google Play store, where we are now growing by at least 20% every week,” Izedonmwen said.
Explaining the operations of Teesas, Izedonmwen said the content is aligned with Nigeria’s national curriculum, and is delivered to learners in both live and recorded formats. This can be accessed through a subscription program that starts at $6 a month. In addition to regular school work, the startup also offers local language classes.
“Live classes deal with concepts where learners have challenges. The learners sit with teachers in small remote classes of 10 or 15 for a personalized engagement, and to get more rigour into the teaching process,” he said.
Commenting on future plans, Izedonmwen said that processes are on to ensure that Teesas offer full-curriculum modules for learners aged up to 12 years. Teesas is also set to introduce life-skill classes in the first half of next year to prepare learners for self-discovery. This is in addition to anti-bullying lessons, inspired by the reports of increasing spate of bullying in Nigeria, with some incidents leading to death.
“We foresee a future where kids don’t have to attend in-person classes because they can cover entire curriculums on an app, and be ready enough for their secondary school entrance exams.”
Izedonmwen plans to use the seed investment to expand into new markets, launch a marketplace that will link learners with tutors for private lessons, and expand the range of products in its portfolio.
Explaining how the development of Teesas started, he said that work began in March last year, with the platform’s design and development borrowing heavily from its edtech peers in India, which were used as benchmarks for content structure and lesson delivery.
“I was looking at India because they are really advanced, and have some big companies like Byju leading the edtech revolution. I actually went out there to spend some time to really understand the model, and also looked at opportunities to improve on what they were doing…then we applied indigenous adaptation,” he said.
These adaptations include the use of local art, food, animals, cultural practices and languages to complement the learning process.
“Teesas is going to have the biggest impact on the future of education in Africa. And I really want to be certain that I’m putting my best effort in leading that transformation – that’s why I’m focusing on it fully,” he said while confirming that part of their next plan will be to enter new markets in Francophone, East and Southern Africa.
Izedonmwen is a trained engineer who worked at ExxonMobil for 15 years efore he resigned to start his own tech company, Imose Technologies. While he is now fully engaged with Teesas, where he is the CEO, he also continues to serve as the chairman of Imose Technologies, the Lagos-based tech company he founded to manufacture and assemble electronic devices including mobile phones, tablets, internet routers and laptops.
Teesas now joins a growing list of edtech startups in Africa that have in recent times received funding from investors making a bet on the fledgling edtech industry in Africa – which has recently seen an upsurge driven by the tailwinds of the covid pandemic.
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