The numbers: What a $35 Million Fundraise Means for Preply
Numbers are so much more than numbers. Let me explain.
When we say that Preply has 250 employees of 36 different nationalities, it means we’re proud to be a culturally diverse team of talented individuals.
When we say Preply has 40,000 bookable tutors teaching 50 languages, it means we’ve created a flexible new way of learning and teaching, anytime, anywhere.
When we say Preply has hundreds of thousands of students from 180 countries worldwide, it means they’re growing personally and professionally.
And when we say Preply has raised $35 million in Series B funding, it means we’re one step closer to delivering on our mission: shaping the future of effective learning.
Success begins from the inside. We have built a strong company culture around people who are deeply committed to understanding what both our tutors and students need. Our employees are endlessly agile, innovative and curious — all in an effort to make our platform the best it can be. Together, we’re making a tremendous impact on e-learning.
We have a lot to be proud of this year:
- We saw the number of active learners and tutors, GMV and overall revenues quadruple across the board;
- We developed a proprietary curriculum product that compliments human learning features, including placement tests, AI voice recognition and interactive vocabulary exercises;
- Securing our leading position in Western Europe and North America;
- Growing our team; doubling our size over the last twelve months, now with over 250 Preplers between Kyiv and Barcelona.
And while we can credit much of our success to hard work, it would be remiss not to acknowledge how COVID-19 has impacted global learning habits. Lockdown measures have accelerated the adoption of 1–1 learning technologies, bringing greater flexibility to anyone interested in learning a language to carry on with their journey without needing to be physically present in a language school. The edtech marketplace was already on an upward trajectory, but we never could have imagined just how much the pandemic would change many different aspects of lives, notably education.
We can now say with confidence that the e-learning trend is not going away anytime soon. In fact, the online language learning market size is estimated to be worth over USD 21 billion by 2024.
For all the reasons mentioned above, our investors are committed to catapulting Preply to the next level. This latest round was co-led by Owl Ventures and Full In Partners, with participation from previous investors Point Nine Capital, Hoxton Ventures, as well as EduCapital, All Iron, Diligent Capital and Evli Growth Partners. Angel investors Niklas Ostberg, co-founder and CEO of Delivery Hero, Arthur Kosten, co-founder of Booking.com, Przemyslaw Gacek, co-founder of Grupa Pracuj, and David Helgason, co-founder of Unity Technologies are also participants.
So, you may be wondering, “What do you do with $35 million?” We’ve given it some thought:
This new funding will help us tackle a variety of strategic priorities:
- Doubling our workforce across all divisions and locations;
- Improving support systems and amplifying the classroom and curriculum experience;
- Building out our B2B business, which we expect to become a much larger proportion of our revenues in the coming years;
- Diversifying our media and marketing mix to build a globally-recognised brand;
- Scaling in promising new markets to really deliver on our mission to shape the future of effective learning.
All of this to say: I’m incredibly grateful for the unwavering support of our team, tutors, students and investors — all of whom have made this major milestone possible.
Danke! Merci! Xièxie! Gracias!
Kirill
