The EduTech sector continues to grow rapidly around the globe and France is no exception. French startups like 360Learning, Neodemia, digiSchool, Unishared and more seek to capitalize on the rapidly increasing need in for more innovative models to both early and life-long learning. As the traditional education system continues to come under pressure in France and elsewhere, these startups are likely to play a big role in shaping a new approach to education. While MOOCs and other EduTech models have taken-off more quickly in other markets, investors are starting to take note, with several EduTech startups raising funds over the last couple years.
The most recent fundraising success comes from Kartable, which announced the closing of a €1.2 million round with Partech, BPI France, and various business angels. This brings the total funds they’ve raised to date to €1.4m following their raising of an initial €200k seed round. Founded in 2011 by Sarah Besnaïnou and Julien Cohen-Solalwith, Kartable offers free courses targeted towards junior high through high school students. Covering a range of course subjects including physics, mathematics, english, spanish, geography, etc, the founders sought to address what they saw as a lack of reliable, accessible online course content in France.
Their objective with their latest funding round has been to build-out its development team, which has been actively working on new functionalities on their web and mobile platforms, set for launch in the coming months. While their platform has grown to 1 million monthly visitors, their business model has yet to have been defined. However, they do seem to be leaning towards a freemium model and have, notably, already reached out to Samsung on a potential collaboration, which would help them start to monetize their audience. Of course, they’ve also reached out to French national education body about potential partnership as well.