Aanaab, a Jeddah-based edtech startup that provides digital professional development training for teachers and educators, has raised $1.5 million in its first external funding round.
The seed round was led by Nour Nouf for Knowledge and Wamda, with a group of angel investors also participating in it.
Founded in 2016 by Mounira Jamjoom, a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Oxford, Aanaab offers online courses for teachers and educators to help them improve their skills in different areas, including self-development, educational strategies, education techniques, and educational tools and techniques. Teachers can enrol in various courses available on Aanaab’s platform for free. However, they are required to pay a fee upon completion of the course if they want to receive the certificate. To be eligible to receive certificates, teachers or participants must complete the course and pass it, with at least 60 to 70 percent score.
Aanaab’s courses comprised of video lectures, reading material, discussion boards, tasks and tests, online meetings, and more. The company claims to have trained over 37,000 teachers in the Arab world with a 28% course completion rate, which it says is twice the global average of other online education platforms, and 95% trainee satisfaction rate.
In addition to offering various courses to teachers on its platform, Aanaab also provides schools and education centres with different solutions to help them manage professional development for their teachers and leaders.
The company partners with various leading educational institutions that offer professional development programs. It counts Cambridge Assessment International Education, Dar Al-Hekma University, and Rwaq among its curriculum partners. The startup claims to have awarded more than 450 teachers with Cambridge International Certificates after completing different courses on its platform.
Aanaab has also recently launched Technical Teacher Course in partnership with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia to train over 1,000 teachers with different skills and help them learn how to integrate technology in education.
Meanwhile, the latest investment is said to have come as part of an effort to support the expansion of the company’s operations to reach new segments and markets in the online teacher training sector.
