Tyro, an Egypt-based online tutoring platform has acquired Nafham, an edtech startup focused on school curricula of Egypt, KSA, and UAE.
With this acquisition, Tyro’s leadership is taking over Nafham’s management and operations to enhance the customer experience of Nafham’s 6 million users. Tyro will be the overall holding company and it will continue to deliver live tutoring services as well as extending technology capabilities to the group. Tyro has also secured a kickoff fund for the new entity from several investors including Flat6Labs, and NXL Partners.
Co-founded in 2017 by Mokhtar Osman and Amir Sabry , Tyro is a platform that connects students with qualified instructors through one-to-one online sessions. Through the platform, students can browse through a selection of qualified tutors viewing their skills, certification, availability, rates as well as reviews.
Tyro aims to reshape the tutoring industry in Egypt by formalizing an informal economy through giving students access to pre-screened and vetted tutors who are able to provide “real value” at an affordable rate. It also aims to empower the tutoring community through offering tutors better exposure to students as well as offering the opportunity to work flexibly from anywhere. Teaching online eliminates the hassle of actually getting to the students allowing the tutor to shift their focus to taking up more students.
Speaking about the acquisition, Co-founder and CEO of Tyro, Mokhtar Osman, said, “Both companies joining forces will technically make us the largest Edutech platform in the MENA region providing both, live online tutoring as well as recorded educational video content. It is crucial to capitalize on both the technology capabilities, and a solid customer base, to be successful. With this merger, we are well-positioned to take the platform to the next level.”
Osman further added, “Nafham is one of the largest online educational platforms in the Middle East with 6 million annual users and over 150 million views garnered on their video content. Nafham’s content is focused on school curricula of Egypt, KSA, and UAE for k-12. Nafham has a very strong & established brand presence within the MENA region which is why we’ll be focusing on further strengthening the Nafham brand.”
Since its inception, Tyro has completed over 50,000 paid sessions, has been scaling with double digit growth rates, and is financially self-sustaining.
Adding further about the latest development, Co-founder, Amir Sabry, said, “Online education is here to stay and its adoption has only been significantly accelerated due to the pandemic. It is now considered a permanent source of knowledge and content generation. This acquisition also confirms our commitment to delivering Edutech products and services for years to come, and our impregnable belief in our model.”
Nafham, started in 2012 by Mostafa Farahat, is a free online K-12 crowdsourced educational platform linked to the mandated public curriculum. The platform provides 5 to 20 minutes crowd-sourced videos which are revised by professionals. These videos are categorized by grade, subject, term and academic schedule which make the curriculum easier for students to navigate through it and get the lessons they want in seconds.
The startup is on a mission to enhance the learning experience and maximize the potential for each young African and Arab individual.
In June 2019, Tyro had raised $60,000 in a pre-seed round led by Flat6Labs Egypt.
