Online education platform Digischool has raised €14 Million led by Creadev, the investment arm for the Mulliez family, a notable French distribution power behind Auchan, Leroy Merlin, Boulanger & Decathlon, among others. The investment round also included Clément Cézard, a former early employee at Deezer & current European BizDev Director for Netflix. Digischool owns 13 web sites & 10 applications which create a complete digital education curriculum – everything from English lessons to high school exit exams, from professional education to driving school.
The team of 60 employees & an additional 100 dedicated teachers to date makes available over 300,000 courses to the 15-25 age group, which are available across all devices (even, coming soon, on your smart TV), and 90% of that content is available for free to registered users. More than 8 Million monthly visitors and 137,000 new registered users per month make digischool one of France’s fastest growing educational platforms.
With an established presence in France (50% of middle schoolers & highschoolers are signed up on the platform), Digischool says that 2016 will be the year they expand to Spain & England, setting the bar high for themselves in terms of 2016 objectives:
- 30 Million visitors & 500K registered users from the UK & SPain
- 40 new team members in 2016
Digischool has grown fast, born from a merger between Kreactive & Media Etudiant in 2011 – the education space is tense, both with actors in the US (uDemy, Coursera, udacity) as well as France (Openclassrooms, notably) – a comprehensive list of all MOOCs and online courses has been compiled by the Open Education Database. As Digischool expands through Europe, they will need to prove that there is enough synergy between the education systems they seek to replace to justify growing internationally – each new market will have new languages, new curriculum (at least from a government perspective, and thus in the eyes of students). Can Digischool become the next Kaplan? 2016 will be the year we find out.