UAE-based online English teaching platform Englease.com has raised a $3.4 million seed round to further develop its online live education solution and fuel expansion.
The oversubscribed round was co-led by two of the worlds’ largest EdTech investors, US-based LearnCapital and LearnStart and joined by big name regional investors COTU, BY Venture Partners, Hambro Perks Oryx Fund, Wamda, 500 Global, Dubai Angel Investors and ALMA.
Founder Omar Chihane said his aim is to make synchronous English language education possible at scale by leveraging the power of technology to deliver a high-quality product in a flexible and highly affordable way.
The company is on a mission to help one million people become proficient in English, he added.
Rob Hutter, founder and managing partner at LearnCapital, said: “We believe that the single biggest contributing factor to a country’s GDP growth is leveraging its human capital, and Englease.com’s ability to deliver synchronous English education at scale and their focus on employability across the MENA region set them apart as a category leader in the region.”
Chihane added: “English proficiency is the number one driver of employability in the MENA region, yet the region has the world’s lowest English proficiency rate and has had the world’s highest youth unemployment rate, according to the world bank, 25 years running. The only way to tackle this very real problem was to build a highly impactful solution that is both scalable and affordable.”
Englease.com offers live English classes online round the clock, led by bilingual tutors delivering their own UK accredited curriculum.
Students simply complete a proficiency assessment test before being granted unlimited access to live classes with Englease.com’s tutors
Students pay a one-time fee for the ability to access unlimited live groups classes or select their one-on-one tutoring option for up to a full year thereby drastically bringing the cost of synchronous education down.
The global English as a second language (ESL) market hit a record 1.72 billion learners in 2021 and is projected to grow at an annual rate of 15.8 percent until 2027.
English is also the dominant language of the internet with over 60.4 percent of the top 10 million websites being in English, followed by Russian, a distant second at 8.5 percent.
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