Contxto – Investing in education seems like a promising bet for venture capital (VC) funds as of late. But can you blame ‘em? The coronavirus pandemic has shown the practicality of continuing education from the comfort of your couch.
Yesterday (3), news broke that edtech Ubits raised equity capital through an investment fund owned by Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business (GSB). The value of the transaction was not disclosed, however.
This constitutes the first time the GSB contributes to a startup from Latin America.
“The quality and relevance of its short classes, its customers’ satisfaction, the human touch, and its team’s potential are what convinced us that this should be the first investment the fund makes in a company from Latin America,” says Daniel Uribe an investor at GSB.
The Colombian startup also told Forbes, the funds would serve to offer more online classes as well as expand within the region.
Employee engagement through Ubits
Latam is increasingly filled with edtechs that offer all sorts of content: language-learning apps, classes on digital marketing, entrepreneurship, and so on.
And while businesses should always be in favor of their employees’ education, that doesn’t imply they’ll foot the bill for it. Unless they can get something out of it.
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In that sense, B2B startup Ubits offers staff content that’s short and targets skillsets businesses crave.
Meanwhile, the company itself saves resources as they don’t need to hold classes within its own installations and their employees can access a greater variety of content by subscribing to a single platform.
E-learning in the future
Does a post-pandemic era mark the end of this trend? Not necessarily.
Remote work or hybrid approaches are here to stay in many cases. Consequently, e-learning as an employee benefit can help companies attract, engage, and thus retain top talent.
Nonetheless, edtechs would be wise to ensure that they maintain the quality of their content. It might be tempting to top the competition by offering “thousands” of online classes.
But if the quality is poor, retaining users in the medium to long-run will be tougher.
Nonetheless, edtechs would be wise to ensure that they maintain the quality of their content. It might be tempting to top the competition by offering more and more online classes than they do.
But they’ll get a failing grade from users if the quality is poor.
Related articles: Tech and startups from Colombia!
-ML
