Tutored by Teachers (TbT), an online tutoring platform, announced that it has raised over $10 million in Series A funding, led by GSV Ventures.
The round also saw participation from new investors TMV and A-Street Ventures, who join early supporters NewSchools Venture Fund, former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools superintendent and TbT advisor Peter Gorman, and noted edtech founders Sidharth Kakkar (Freckle, acquired by Renaissance) and Neal Taparia (Imagine Easy Solutions, acquired by Chegg).
With the latest round of funding, the New York headquartered startup plans to expand its teacher community and increase capacity to serve more than 10,000 K-12 students this year.
Co-founded by Shaan Akbar and Rahul Kalita in 2020, Tutored by Teachers is a fast-growing, mission driven startup working to improve outcomes for high-need students and teachers and advance equity in education. The platform employs an evidence-based approach to partner directly with schools to match high-need, under-served students with supplemental, small-group virtual instruction from highly qualified, certified teachers, while offering teachers the compensation they deserve and opportunities to grow into education management roles within TbT.
Talking about the company, Co-founder of Tutored by Teachers, Shaan Akbar, said,
“COVID has worsened outcomes for everyone. It has disrupted classrooms, made the important work of being a classroom teacher harder, and widened the opportunity gap for low-income and under-represented students. We are building a small group, virtual learning infrastructure into the school day to bolster K-12 education, and in the process, we are on the road to creating the largest public-private partnership this country has seen. We won’t rest until students and teachers achieve their full potential.”
By bringing together a community of diverse, engaged teachers and focusing well-beyond academics with TbT’s whole child approach to learning, the program has already started to see success in some of the nation’s largest cities, including Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Indianapolis and Charlotte.
Commenting on the fundraise, Managing Partner of GSV Ventures, Deborah Quazzo, said,
“GSV is proud to be partnering with Shaan and Rahul, world-class entrepreneurs, childhood friends and co-founders at TbT. We believe that K-12 students in the U.S. require high-dosage tutoring delivered with the highest learning efficacy at scale to recover from unprecedented learning loss. For us, TbT is an investment in a high Return on Education organization — increasing access to the highest quality learning while giving leverage to learning leaders to counteract the generational learning losses that have occurred. We could not be more proud to align with this team.”
The startup believes that education should be convenient, customized, and accessible. It also believes that certified teachers are best equipped to be entrusted with the children’s learning.
Principal of Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), Dr. Lester Powell, added:
“Tutored by Teachers’ accessible learning model and qualified network of teachers has been instrumental in changing the trajectory of our students who were falling behind and needed additional support.”
Last year in February, Tutored by Teachers had raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Seed round from Sandy Khaund.
