EdTech startup Shikho has raised a $175k bridge round from three investors, reports the Daily Star. The new investors are Zubair Siddiky and Ambareen Reza, the Co-founders and Managing Directors of Foodpanda Bangladesh. Learn Capital, the silicon valley based venture capital fund that invested in Shikho earlier, also participated in this round. Zubair Siddiky will join Shikho’s board as part of the deal.
Shikho previously raised $100k from Learn Capital. The new funding put Shikho’s total investment raised to $275k. With the new investment, the company plans to invest in tech and introduce new app features and launch new courses for the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC).
From New EdTech Startup Shikho Launches, Aims to Provide High-Quality Digital Education at an Affordable Price: “Access to quality education remains a major challenge for most parents in Bangladesh. The quality is not distributed equally across the country. The top ten schools in Bangladesh are far ahead of the rest of the pack. The best schools in Dhaka are far ahead of the best schools in any other part of the country. Even within Dhaka, only a small number of parents can afford to send their kids to the best schools. The best schools are concentrated geographically, making access to high-quality education almost impossible for most pupils.
The internet could effectively break this distribution problem and create more equitable access to quality education across the country. There is no boundary on the internet.
This is one of the problems Shikho aims to solve. With high-quality digital content and affordable price, the company aims to make quality education accessible to all.”
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We have seen decent growth in online education in Bangladesh in the past few years. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the pace. Education technology startups have been receiving increased attention from investors since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Shikho raising new investment is a testament to that new market reality.
While Dhaka has a number of edtech players in different verticals, the market does not have a dominant player as yet. In fact, the new investment puts Shikho one of the well-funded startups in the education space.
“1/ Shikho is a newly launched ed-tech company in Dhaka that aims to develop a best-in-class mobile learning application for Bangladesh. The company, launched on October 30th, provides online learning through Shikho mobile app. The app has animated video lessons, video lectures, text-based notes and solutions of previous years’ questions and answers, and a recommendation engine that analyzes the learning curve of a student and suggests areas of improvement.”
