Ho Chi Minh City skyline. Image credit: Peter Nguyen via Unsplash.
Education technology (edtech) is once again among the top sectors in Southeast Asia (SEA) for raising venture capital, according to a new report from market research firm Tracxn.
Experts say a rising middle class and more interest in digital learning following the COVID pandemic are main drivers of growth.
With nearly 700 million people living in the 10 ASEAN bloc countries, the Asian Development Bank estimates that Asia will house 65% of the world’s middle class by 2030.
With this increased economic growth, Southeast Asia has seen more of an interest from middle class parents to spend on digital education, according to a 2021 report by MIT Solve.
Market sizes for edtech in countries like Singapore (USD $2.2 billion by 2027) and Vietnam (USD $5.4 billion by 2028) are fueling investment as well as interest from foreign companies like Duolingo, which last year said that Vietnam was among its top three markets globally for new users added daily.
While investment into edtech has slowed significantly since its peak in 2021, when the sector raised $980 million, Tracxn said the sector is one three that have led in terms of funding contributions to Southeast Asian companies in the past five years. Other leading sectors include healthtech and the blockchain.
SEA edtech funding in 2022 and 2023 was 8.5X lower than in 2021, Tech in Asia reported, but this was also the case in other large Asian markets like China and India. The publication also noted that new global developments in generative AI, specifically the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, have some (but not all) edtech startups on alert.
And while Southeast Asia has seen a nearly 70% drop in overall funding raised for startups so far in 2024 compared to 2023, large investment firms like Antler and Asia Partners, have announced raising new multi-million dollar funds this year, possibly signaling a rebound for the VC ecosystem.
With edtech as one of the leading drivers of fundraising for Southeast Asia, let’s take a look at a few promising companies in the space that hail from the region:
Founded in Ho Chi Minh City in 2022 by Phan An, WordsMine helps users effectively improve their vocabulary in a short amount of time. Its combined internet browser extension and web app let users look up words in Vietnamese and English as they go about their daily workflow on their phones or computers. Users can store and categorize their vocabulary words for further study and the company also offers a proprietary “bi-directional dictionary” which allows users to look up definitions quickly in many languages.
“For many budding entrepreneurs in Vietnam, the fear of not being able to express their ideas clearly in English can be a major setback. This can limit their ability to attract international investors, partner with global companies, and reach a broader audience,” WordsMine co-founder Giovanni Puglisi said. “Platforms like WordsMine address this issue head-on by providing personalized tools that break down language barriers and amplify voices, using science-backed learning tools to enhance vocabulary retention”.
Puglisi has a background in the media, having written for The South China Morning Post, KrAsia and Asia Times Financial, while Phan is an engineer, who held various senior management positions, such as Innovation Lab Lead and Product Owner, at both state-owned companies and global tech giants like SAP.
Founded in 2017 by two education professionals, Alicia Cheong and Zhizhong Neo, Geniebook came about because the two founders had a hard time scaling their in-person tutoring services. “I can’t be at two locations at once, and within a classroom, we can’t personalize for more than 15 students simultaneously,” Neo told Tech in Asia in 2022.
So they founded Geniebook, which leverages artificial intelligence (AI), pre-recorded online classes, and a social learning platform with real-life teachers. The company uses AI to help recommend questions to students based on academic strengths and gaps, according to their website.
Geniebook says it has over 200,000 users and has raised Series A funding, according to Crunchbase data. The company is backed by investors including Apricot Capital, East Ventures Growth, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Of the company’s successful transition from brick and mortar to completely digital, Neo told Tech in Asia, “That was when we realized that it was an extremely difficult maneuver, and we’re really very fortunate to have the team that accomplished this.”
Fammi brings together parents and educators on one social learning platform to foster the best possible learning and development outcomes for children.
Realizing that a lot of pressure exists on parents as well as children to succeed and live happy lives, Jakarta-based Henny Irniawan started Fammi in 2020. The online platform provides assessment and mentoring services for leaders, teachers, employees and families.
She told Tech Collective last year that an in-house survey they conducted found that 98% of parents struggle with raising their children, and it’s affecting their mental health.
“Our goal is to help parents overcome these issues and ensure they don’t have to struggle with their relationship with their children,” she told the publication. “Using our CARE approach (standing for Consult, Assess, Relearn and Empower) for the whole family, our focus is to provide a holistic approach to equip parents with the right tools and resources to raise a better generation of individuals.”
The company said it has provided benefits to over 4,000 schools in Southeast Asia and has raised an undisclosed funding round from Indigo by Telkom Indonesia, according to Crunchbase data.
Two years ago, a little-known edtech startup from Kuala Lumpur made headlines in the region after it snagged a $2 million seed investment from Y Combinator, 500 Global, Soma Capital, and other investors.
Since then, Pandai has gone on to become one of the fastest growing educational technology companies in Malaysia and has won numerous awards from the likes of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the ASEAN Startup Awards.
Founded in 2020 by Khairul Anwar, Akmal Akhpah and Suhaimi Ramly, Pandai’s learning platform creates gamified quizzes aligned with Malaysian school curriculums to help students learn and understand areas of improvement.
The company has portals for parents and teachers as well, to help track students’ progress and set goals for pupils. The company aims its app at primary and secondary level education students.
In an interview with Y Combinator’s Hacker News, the founders explained what led them to build the platform:
“In Southeast Asia, the education system is competitive and exam-oriented. There is a huge demand for interventions (tutors, workbooks, and extra classes) to help students perform better in school. Pandai fills the demand with a solution that is better than the alternatives.”
The founders studied at some of the leading engineering universities in the United States, including Purdue and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), before brainstorming ways to venture off into business together. They’ve since worked together forming multiple companies, mostly in the technology and education space.
In 2024, we’re now very much used to interacting with AI-powered chatbots when we do everything from book a doctor’s appointment to order a delivery meal. But in 2018, one Singapore-based startup was way ahead of the curve, creating an AI assistant for educators.
Noodle Factory, which is backed by EduSpaze, Enterprise Singapore’s edtech accelerator program, provides a no-code tool for teachers to create AI tutors for students to help with everything from tutoring, mentoring, assessments and feedback.
Founded by Yvonne Soh and Jim Wagstaff, both former managers at Dell, Noodle Factory aims to free up time for teachers to do more teaching. In an interview with The Straits Times, Wagstaff said, “This is not about automating away teachers, but to find a way to take some time spent on such tasks and give it back to them, to allow them to focus on what they love and what they are best at.”
The company has also expanded to provide tools for workplace learning. The company’s proprietary virtual assistant, Walter, helps companies train employees efficiently and and securely, integrating with most human resources (HR) systems and counts certifications from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
One of Noodle Factory’s enterprise clients, Citrix Singapore, told Frontier Enterprise that they enjoyed the company’s approach to using AI.
“Rather than trying to use AI to create better sales reps, the use of AI is really focused on automating repetitive tasks and building structured knowledge within training and development,” said Tan Sze-Tong, Citrix’s Regional Channel Strategy and Operations Director in Asia Pacific.
Even though students have returned to in-person learning following the pandemic, the ripple effects of the digital learning boom of 2020 and 2021 remain.
Increasingly, education will be a mix of online and in-person, and some of these digital education startups could be at the forefront of the next evolution in digital learning in Southeast Asia in years to come.
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