Edupia, a Hanoi-based online English learning platform, has raised $14 million in Series A financing led by Jungle Ventures, with participation from eWTP Capital (a venture fund under Alibaba and Ant Financial) and Vietnamese firm ThinkZone Ventures.
The latest round brings Edupia’s total funding to date to $16 million.
Founded in 2018 by Tran Duc Hung, Edupia aims to provide an easy and accessible English-learning platform to eliminate language-based inequalities in Vietnam. Edupia uses the latest technology to bring high-quality English learning opportunities to millions of Vietnamese students. It offers fascinating lectures taught by international teachers, game-style exercises, and exclusive speaking practice technology that helps students pronounce correctly and communicate confidently. The app also sticks to the textbook program, helping students master the lesson and get high marks in class.
Edupia currently has over 5 million users, with over 400,000 paying students. While most of its users are in Vietnam, the English learning app is seeing demand from other Southeast Asian markets including Indonesia, Thailand, and Myanmar.
“Language should not be a barrier to opportunity and access,” Hung said in a statement. “Edupia bridges the big education gap among students between metros and lower-tier cities.”
Before founding Edupia, Hung spent 10 years as director of digital services at Viettel, the largest telco in Vietnam. While there, he saw how digitization was transforming many aspects of daily life, including e-commerce, finance, healthcare, and education. At the same time, Hung tells TechCrunch, he also observed the gap between the educational resources available in larger, wealthier cities and other areas of Vietnam, especially in English. Seeing the opportunity, he launched a self-learning online platform to make English education accessible to every K-12 student and expanded into live classes and private tutoring.
Hung said the company is on track to exceed its $100 million revenue target in the next three years.
With the latest funding, Edupia is looking to focus on products for K-12 students and has been expanding into additional subjects such as mathematics and coding. The company also plans to expand to Thailand and Indonesia as well as to introduce tech features and solutions.
