African Edtech Startup uLesson Raises $15M, Backed By Nielsen Ventures And Tencent

Two-year-old startup uLesson has just announced that it closed a $15 million Series B round.

The startup first launched by providing a product pack of SD cards and dongles with pre-recorded videos for K-12 students. They can either access lessons via streaming or use the SD cards to download and store the content.

But uLesson has introduced new features for an all-encompassing edtech play for this demographic. It added quizzes and a homework help feature to connect students with tutors from universities.

It also launched a one-to-many live class feature with polls and leaderboards and a one-to-one live experience for DevKids, a coding class independent of the core uLesson platform.

So far, the startup app has 2 million downloads, the company said. In addition, over 12.3 million videos have been watched, with 25.6 million questions answered on the platform.

The investment, which comes 11 months after the startup raised a $7.5 million Series A, was completed by five investors.

Tencent, Nielsen Ventures, and existing investors Owl Ventures, TLcom Capital, and Founder Collective were involved in the fundraising.  It is the most significant disclosed investment in an African tech startup.

uLesson was launched by Sim Shagaya in 2019.