Companies like Guild Education help you learn job skills, while DreamBox makes math easier for school kids.
GoStudent connects students with tutors through video chats, and Course Hero offers online study guides and video lessons.
Venture funds and angel investors are increasingly recognizing the value in this educational transformation, directing substantial investments into these startups.
The investment ensures these companies have the asset management capabilities to innovate continually, adding more robust features to their technology platforms.
These companies do more than just teach. They also let teachers and students check progress with real-time feedback. Some, like A Cloud Guru, even focus on helping students become tech pros.
The growth rate of this industry is expected to be 13.6% yearly from 2023 to 2030.
So, which of these fast-growing startups will be the next big thing in learning?
1. BYJU’S
Byju’s is an Indian multinational educational technology company, founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath, and headquartered in Bangalore1. As of September 2023, Byju’s was valued at $5.1 billion and claimed to have over 150 million registered students.
Byju’s offers highly engaging and effective learning programs for students from classes 1-12 (K-12), and preparation for competitive exams such as JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE, and GMAT.
Year founded: Byju’s was founded in the year 2011.
Location: The company is headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka, India.
Funding: Byju’s has raised a total of $6 billion in funding over 27 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on May 13, 2023, from a Debt Financing round.
Growth Trend: Byju’s has seen significant growth over the years. In financial year 2021, it reported a revenue of around 23 billion Indian rupees, marking an 82% increase over the previous year. The company also expects to register a three-fold growth in revenue in this financial year.
Annual Search Growth Rate: Byju’s had reached 150 million users, up from 80 million earlier in 2021, indicating a strong growth trend.
2. Knewton
Knewton is an adaptive learning company that has developed a platform to personalize educational content as well as developed courseware for higher education concentrated in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Year founded: 2008
Location: New York, USA
Funding: $187.3M
Growth Trend: Knewton was acquired by publisher Wiley Education after failing to live up to its self-generated hype.
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
3. Perlego
Perlego is a digital online library focusing on the delivery of academic, professional, and non-fiction eBooks. It is a subscription-based service that offers users unlimited access to these texts for the duration of their subscription.
Year founded: 2017
Location: London, United Kingdom
Funding: Not available
Growth Trend: Not available
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
4. Outschool
Outschool, Inc. is an American online marketplace of virtual classes for children. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Year founded: 2015
Location: San Francisco, California, USA
Funding: Not available
Growth Trend: Not available
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
5. FutureLearn
FutureLearn is a British digital education platform founded in December 2012. The company is jointly owned by The Open University and SEEK Ltd. It is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), ExpertTrack, microcredential, and degree learning platform.
Year founded: 2012
Location: Not available
Funding: Not available
Growth Trend: Not available
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
6. Coursera
Coursera (here is our review) is an American massive open online course provider founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller.
Year founded: 2012
Location: Not available
Funding: Not available
Growth Trend: Not available
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
7. Atom Learning
Atom Learning is an online learning platform that combines the best of technology with the best of pedagogy to improve the standard of learning in schools. It was founded in 2018 and is based in London, England.
Year founded: 2018
Location: London, England, United Kingdom
Funding: Raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2
Growth Trend: Atom Learning has grown impressively since its launch in 2018. It is currently used by 500 primary schools in the U.K., totaling some 100,000 students.
8. Course Hero
Course Hero is an American education technology website company based in Redwood City, California. The company was founded by Andrew Grauer at Cornell University in October 2006.
Year founded: October 2006
Location: Redwood City, California, United States
Funding: Not available
Growth Trend: Not available
9. Udemy
Udemy is an American massive open online course provider aimed at professional adults and students. It was founded in May 2010 by Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and Oktay Caglar.
Year founded: May 2010
Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Funding: Not available
Growth Trend: Not available
10. Unibuddy
Unibuddy is a London-based ed-tech startup that helps universities attract students with a “try before you buy” approach. It was founded in 2015.
Year founded: 2015
Location: London, England, United Kingdom
Funding: Raised a total of $32 million from investors including Stride VC, Highland VC, and Daniel Borel
Growth Trend: Unibuddy has partnerships with over 600 higher education institutions around the world.
11. BenchPrep
BenchPrep is a comprehensive learner success platform that enables the world’s leading education and training companies to deliver best-in-class digital learning programs. The company’s modern cloud-based platform is transforming the professional education space.
Year founded: Not available
Location: Not available
Funding: Not available
Growth Trend: Not available
12. Blackboard
Blackboard Inc. was an American educational technology company known for Blackboard Learn, a learning management system. It was founded in 1997 and merged with Anthology in late 2021.
Year founded: 1997
Location: Reston, Virginia, U.S.
Funding: Not available
Growth Trend: Not available
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
13. Firefly Learning
Firefly Learning is an educational technology company based in London, England that provides virtual learning platforms to hundreds of schools around the world. It was started in 2000 by Joe Mathewson and Simon Hay.
Year founded: 2000
Location: London, England
Funding: £9.5M
Growth Trend: Not available
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
14. Chegg
Chegg is an American education technology company that provides digital and physical textbook rentals, online tutoring, and other student services. It was founded in 2005.
Year founded: 2005
Location: Santa Clara, California, U.S.
Funding: Not available
Growth Trend: Not available
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
15. MyTutor
MyTutor is a UK-based EdTech startup that provides online interactive one-to-one tuition for secondary school-aged pupils. It was founded in 2013 by Bertie Hubbard, James Grant, and Robert Grabiner.
Year founded: 2013
Location: London, England
Funding: £15 million
Growth Trend: Not available
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
16. Civitas Learning
Civitas Learning is a student success platform for higher education that was started in 2011 to translate the world’s learning data into actionable insights higher education institutions need to help their students succeed.
Year founded: 2011
Location: Austin, Texas, United States
Funding:$63.9M
Growth Trend: Not available
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
17. Degreed
Degreed is an education technology company that was founded by David Blake, David Wiley, and Eric Sharp. The company is based in San Francisco, CA, and has offices in Salt Lake City, UT, New York, London, Brisbane, Australia, and Leiden, The Netherlands. It provides a platform for individuals and organizations to discover content, build skills, and certify expertise.
Year founded: 2012
Location: San Francisco, CA
Funding: Raised $182 million as of 2021
Growth Trend: Expanding globally with a growing user base
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
18. Voxy
Voxy is an American eLearning company that provides an English learning platform. It was founded by Gregg Carey and Paul Gollash and is headquartered in New York City with an office in São Paulo, Brazil.
Year founded: 2010
Location: New York City, NY
Funding: Raised $4.1 million in Series A round
Growth Trend: Expanding its offerings to corporations and educational institutions globally
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
19. Skillshare
Skillshare is an online learning community-based in the United States for people who want to learn from educational videos. The courses are not accredited and are only available through paid subscription.
Year founded: 2010
Location: United States
Funding: Raised $65 million as of 2021
Growth Trend: Growing rapidly with a large number of registered users worldwide
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
20. Cuemath Center
Cuemath is a math learning program for children aged 4 to 14 (Kindergarten to Grade 8). This program is offered at home-based centers across India and is built by Cuelearn Pvt Ltd, a Bangalore-based math education company.
Year founded: 2013
Location: Bangalore, India
Funding: Raised $65 million as of 2021
Growth Trend: Expanding its reach with a growing number of teachers and students
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
21. Classkick
Classkick is an online learning platform that allows teachers to create lessons and assignments that students work through on their devices at their own pace. Teachers can observe student progress in real-time and provide immediate feedback.
Year founded: Information not available
Location: Information not available
Funding:$1.6 million raised in Seed round as of March 2015
Growth Trend: Used by over 10 million students globally
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
22. CodeHS
CodeHS is an interactive online learning platform that offers computer science and programming instruction. Founded by Jeremy Keeshin and Zach Galant in 2012, it provides educational materials supported by remote tutors. The platform is designed to make computer science education fun and accessible.
Year founded: 2012
Location: San Francisco, United States
Funding: Not publicly disclosed
Growth Trend: Positive, with increasing adoption in schools worldwide
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
23. Zen Educate
Zen Educate is a London-based educational technology company that was founded in 2017. It provides an online platform that connects schools with temporary and full-time teachers and teaching assistants, aiming to make the recruitment process more efficient and less costly.
Year founded: 2017
Location: London, United Kingdom
Funding: £19.3 million as of October 2022
Growth Trend: Positive, with increasing adoption by schools in the UK
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
24. Preply
Preply is an online learning platform that was founded in 2012 by Ukrainian entrepreneurs Kirill Bigai, Dmytro Voloshyn, and Serge Lukyanov. It connects over 140,000 tutors teaching 50 languages to learners in 180 countries worldwide.
Year founded: 2012
Location: Headquartered in the US with employees in 30 countries across Europe, North America, South America, Africa, and Asia.
Funding: $70 million in a Series C extension round
Growth Trend: Positive, with an increasing number of learners and tutors on the platform
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
25. Unacademy
Unacademy is an Indian multinational educational technology company that was founded by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, and Roman Saini in 2015. It provides an online educational platform that prepares students for various competitive exams as well as foundational and skill-building courses.
Year founded: 2015
Location: Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Funding: Valued at US$3.44 billion
Growth Trend: Positive, with an increasing number of learners and courses offered on the platform
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
26. ApplyBoard
ApplyBoard is a Canadian educational technology company that was founded by Martin Basiri, Massi Basiri, and Meti Basiri in 2015. It offers an artificial intelligence recruitment platform that helps international students apply for post-secondary studies abroad.
Year founded: 2015
Location: Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Funding: More than C$4 billion after its Series D round of C$375 million in June 2021
Growth Trend: Positive, with an increasing number of international students using the platform for their study abroad applications
Annual Search Growth Rate:: Not available
27. Instructure
Instructure, Inc. is an educational technology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is the developer and publisher of Canvas, a web-based learning management system (LMS), and MasteryConnect, an assessment management system.
Year founded: 2008
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
Funding: Not publicly disclosed
Growth Trend: Positive, with increasing adoption in schools worldwide
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
28. InStride
InStride designs industry- and role-driven workforce education programs to deliver bottom-line results for your business and career growth for your people. They partner with leading academic institutions to create tailored learning pathways that help employees develop the in-demand skills your organization needs to thrive now and in the future.
Year founded: 2019
Location: Not publicly disclosed
Funding: Not publicly disclosed
Growth Trend: Positive, with increasing adoption by businesses worldwide
Annual Search Growth Rate: Not available
29. Hivebrite
Hivebrite is a community management and engagement platform that provides tools to build, manage, and engage communities. The platform drives and measures engagement via an administration dashboard, powerful filters, targeting tools, reporting and analytics features, and real-time communication applications.
Year founded: 2015
Location: Paris, France
Funding: Not publicly disclosed
Growth Trend: Positive, with increasing adoption by communities worldwide
Annual Search Growth Rate:: Not available
30. Concept3D
Concept3D is an enterprise virtual tour and interactive map platform with accurate and vivid 3D renderings. Founded in 2007 by former SketchUp employees, Concept3D has thousands of locations mapped and 360° panoramas hosted to create digital worlds of real-life places as well as augment the on-site experience6.
Year founded:: 2007
Location:: Not publicly disclosed
Funding:: Not publicly disclosed
Growth Trend:: Positive, with increasing adoption worldwide
Annual Search Growth Rate:: Not available
31. Guild Education
Guild Education, formerly known as Guild, is a private company based in Denver, Colorado. It is employed by Fortune 1000 companies to manage their education assistance benefits. Guild works for corporate employer clients to facilitate direct payment for courses to education provider clients and offers marketing services to the education provider clients.
Year founded: 2015
Location: Denver, Colorado, United States
Funding: $643.2M
Growth Trend: Positive
Annual Search Growth Rate: 0.09%
32. DreamBox Learning
DreamBox Learning is an American online software provider that focuses on mathematics education at the elementary and middle school level. DreamBox Learning provides pre-kindergarten through 8th-grade students with over 2,000 lessons presented as animated adventures, games, and challenges.
Year founded: 2006
Location: Bellevue, Washington, United States
Funding: $175.6M
Growth Trend: Positive
Annual Search Growth Rate: 0.06%
33. GoStudent
GoStudent is a digital learning platform for online tutoring. Teachers are assigned after an analysis of the students’ needs. Interactive online one-to-one lessons and flexible lesson times bring individuality to tutoring.
Year founded: 2016
Location: Vienna, Austria
Funding: $340M
Growth Trend: Positive
Annual Search Growth Rate: 0.11%
34. Course Hero
Course Hero is a subscription-based online learning platform for course-specific study resources for students. It was founded by college student Andrew Grauer in 2006 with a mission to help students graduate confident and prepared.
Year founded: 2006
Location: Redwood City, California, United States
Funding: $477.4M
Growth Trend: Positive
Annual Search Growth Rate: 0.08%
35. A Cloud Guru
A Cloud Guru is an online learning platform that specializes in teaching cloud computing and related technologies. Most of the courses offered prepare students to take certification exams for the three major cloud providers (Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Amazon Web Services).
Year founded: 2015
Location: Austin, Texas, United States
Funding:$40M
Growth Trend: Negative
Annual Search Growth Rate:-0.02%