The investment makes 10 Minute School the first education
technology company in Bangladesh to secure funding from Surge, a statement read
on Sunday.
The tech startup plans to utilise these funds to invest in
product, technology, and talent acquisition.
Based in Bengaluru, Sequoia Capital India is a venture capital
firm that invests in consumer, technology, and healthcare.
Founder and CEO of the digital platform, Ayman Sadiq, along with
co-founder Abdullah Abyad Raied, launched 10 Minute School in 2015 to
democratise education for all in Bangladesh.
The platform boasts teaching more than 250,000 students a day free
of cost. It won global accolades including the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance or
APICTA and the GLOMO Awards.
The rest of the statement is as follows:
Access to quality teachers across the country has been one of the
longest-standing challenges for the students. Much of the development in
education is still focused around Dhaka and a few major cities, resulting in
poor education infrastructure for the rest of the country. Added to that, the
best coaching centres and private tutors are not affordable to the mass student
population due to socio-economic barriers.
This is where 10 Minute School comes in. This mobile-first online
learning platform bridges the gap between aspiration and opportunities by
offering up affordable, accessible and highly relevant educational content to
25 million school and college students, university admission test candidates,
job-seekers, and people looking for specialized skills training.
Instead of serving an off-the-shelf product feature, the team
constantly interacts with its students to understand their pain points in order
to create tailor-made solutions.
Students from classes 1-12 can advance their learning using
resources like videos, mock exams, lecture sheets, and notes that have been
developed by experts over the years. Those looking to upskill themselves in
their careers have access to various courses like Spoken English, Microsoft
Excel, Corporate training, etc.
The year 2021 marked a significant year of growth for 10 Minute
School, with more than 9 million new learners joining the platforms, 8 million
learning hours delivered, and another 17,000-plus new videos added to its
learning ecosystem. The app (10ms.app) has recently surpassed 3 million users,
making it the largest learning app in the country.
"We have experienced an unprecedented 12-fold business growth
in our platform in 2021 during the pandemic, and a strong validation from our
users who experienced our learning contents.
“Sequoia Capital India’s Surge joining us as our first investor is
a very humbling experience for the team, and it further validates our vision
for democratising access to quality education for all in Bangladesh.
“We want to double down on our growth trajectory this year while
creating an unparalleled learning experience for our students," said
Ayman.
The pandemic has turbocharged online education in Bangladesh, with
offline institutions and exams being put on hold since early 2020.
To ensure that students could continue learning despite the
lockdown, the company launched some of its first premium courses and books
during this time.
Today the platform has over 25,000 classes and skills courses
prepared by some of Bangladesh's best instructors and professionals.
It provides a personalised learning journey for students with the
opportunity to test their learning from a bank of 50,000-plus quizzes and
additional resources like flashcards, audiobooks and notes.
In the first quarter of 2022, the company plans to launch live
coaching classes for students from classes 5-12, test paper courses for HSC and
SSC examinees, complete admission and BCS programmes, a whole series of
interactive academic books for classes 3-12 and 25 more sought-after upskilling
courses.
10 Minute School sees an immense opportunity to help support the
existing education system of the country, which has 43 million students today.
The team also aspires to contribute to the upskilling of its
significant youth population of 5 million, leading to increased employment and
demographic dividends for the country.
Also, the company is looking to hire passionate, mission-driven
individuals in Bangladesh, to join them in this journey of transforming the
country’s education ecosystem
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