Ed-tech startup Lingokids, a 500-Startups-backed company (fka Monkimun) developing language learning services for early childhood, has closed a new funding round of $4 million led by top tier VCs in Europe, Holtzbrinck Ventures and JME Venture Capital. Bessemer Ventures Partners also joined the round. Lingokids has also announced a new distribution agreement with educational publisher Oxford University Press, the largest university press in the world.
Lingokids launched its subscription service in 2016 and has enjoyed a strong year, most notably with the launch of revamped recommendations a’la Netflix and the Lingokids Live service of live tutoring lessons with native educators to create a complete learning experience at home. There are currently two million families using their services around the world
“Rather than creating one-off apps that only teach a few words and phrases, with Lingokids we’ve created a Netflix experience in education with games, songs, videos and audiobooks in a seamless stream of recommendations combined with live tutoring lessons with native educators,” said Cristobal Viedma, CEO of Lingokids. “This new funding allows us to expand the offering, grow into new regions and reach our goal of having 15m families enjoying our services by 2018.”
The investment comes alongside a new collaboration with Oxford University Press (OUP), to make available course-specific learning content inside Lingokids, to extend learning beyond the classroom and encourage parent participation. With this new collaboration, OUP will start bundling physical books with Lingokids and distribute the package in schools around the world.
“We’re thrilled to take the next step in our collaboration with Lingokids,” said Joseph Noble, Head of Partnerships & Innovation for OUP’s English Language Teaching division. “Our use of Lingokids will bring a fresh dimension to our course materials and help to support our syllabus. This new phase in our collaboration will extend the child’s exposure to English to the home.”
About Lingokids:
Lingokids, a San Francisco-based Startup launched in 2016, has 2 million families registered. Our mission is to break language barriers and create equal learning opportunities for all kids around the world. We create a safe environment for children ages two to six to learn a new language. Lingokids’ current offering includes English and simplified Chinese with plans to launch Spanish in the coming months. Lingokids has raised $1.5 million in seed funding to date from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, K-Fund’s founding partners, SHO-zemi Innovation Ventures (an offshoot of Japan’s premier tutoring school network SHO-zemi), Singapore’s Incuvest and angel investors like Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX.To stay current with new releases, check out their website: www.lingokids.com
About Holtzbrinck Ventures
Founded in 2000, with offices in Berlin and Munich Holtzbrinck Ventures is one of the most successful European venture-capital funds. In the last 15 years, HV has invested in over 150 startups. Notable investments in Zalando, FlixBus, Groupon, SumUp, Quandoo mean Holtzbrinck Ventures bring with them immense experience and expertise from diverse areas. Holtzbrinck Ventures has 735 million euro assets under management and the current fund is 285 million euro. www.holtzbrinck-ventures.com
About JME Venture Capital
JME is an early-stage tech venture capital firm based in Madrid (Spain). With more than $60mm in assets under management across two venture funds, JME strives to become the go-to partner of the best Spanish founders everywhere. Past investments include Flywire (formerly peerTransfer), WorldSensing, Jobandtalent, Waynabox, Jetlore, Odilo and Muroexe. www.jme.vc
About Bessemer
Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) is an American global venture capital firm founded in 1911. The firm has $4.5 billion under management and operates offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Israel, and India. Past investments include Yelp, LinkedIN, Twitch and Shopify
About Oxford University Press:
Oxford University Press is the world’s authority on the English language. As part of the University of Oxford, we are committed to furthering English language learning worldwide. We continuously bring together our experience, expertise and research to create resources, helping millions of learners of English to achieve their potential.
