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SEOUL, South Korea, July 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Seoul-based edtech startup Mathpresso announced today that it has raised $50 million in a Series C funding round last week, which puts the company's total funding at $105 million, according to CFO Soo Nahm.
The new Series C round was participated by GGV Capital, Yellowdog, Goodwater Capital, KDB, and SKS Private Equity. In addition to the four new investors, previous backers including SoftBank Ventures Asia, Legend Capital, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, and Smilegate Investment also participated in the round. This round marks GGV's first investment in a Korea-based startup. With edtech as its key global investment thesis, GGV has backed a number of edtech companies like Zuoyebang.
The startup was founded in 2015 by co-CEO Ray Lee and Jake Lee, and operates QANDA, a K-12 mobile learning app. In 2017, QANDA adopted an AI-based optical character recognition(OCR) scan that searches for answers in 5 seconds. The service is now used by over 9.8 million users monthly from more than 50 different countries; a five times increase since 2020. Since launching in Indonesia in August 2019, QANDA topped the education charts and was no.3 in overall categories in the country. Over 80% of QANDA's users are now outside of Korea, with its strongest user bases include Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand.
Mathpresso's home ground has been long considered an educational mine; Korea has one of the highest household expenditures on education in the world. Mathpresso plans to apply Korea's advanced learning content to the global market and develop a multi-faceted, personalized platform.
With its Series C investment, Mathpresso plans to strengthen its AI-based techniques of recommendation algorithms and develop localized business models for its regional offices in Indonesia and Thailand. Mathpresso's Indonesia office was established in May and is planning to produce in-house, mobile-friendly learning content that meets Indonesian students' academic needs.
"Historically, quality education has been strictly available for the privileged few," said Jake Lee, "Our mission is to break down the barriers to education through technology. In the future we vision, anyone should and will be able to access quality education built just for them."
About Mathpresso
With the mission to provide the most effective education for all, Mathpresso develops the world's leading learning platform, QANDA, an AI-based learning app that allows students of all levels to receive instant answers and customized learning sources. Recognized for its technological advances, Mathpresso was selected as GSV Edtech 150, national representative of Google AI for Social Good APAC event in 2018, and guest speaker at AWS Public Sector Summit ASEAN in 2019. Since 2015, Mathpresso has raised $105 million in total from investors including SoftBank Ventures Asia, Legend Capital, Mirae Asset Investment, GGV, and Goodwater Capital. Headquartered in Seoul, Mathpresso has offices in Tokyo, Hanoi, Jakarta, and Bangkok.
About QANDA
QANDA, which stands for 'Q and A,' is a mobile app that allows students of all levels to receive instant answers and customized learning content. QANDA recognizes text and mathematical formulas in a photo with optical character recognition (OCR) technology. Supported by over 2.4 billion solution data and a self-developed search engine, QANDA provides solutions to a student's question with high accuracy. The app has over 9.8 million monthly active users in over 50 countries. The app currently offers 7 languages – Korean, English, Spanish, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Thai.
