Technical education start-up Lingua.ly raises USD 1 million

EdTech startup Lingua.ly, which exists as a Cloud-based web and mobile app available for Android and iOS has raised an amount of a million dollars. The latest funding brings Lingua.ly's total raised capital to USD 1.8 million.

Participants in the round include Udi Netzer (a returning investor), Shai Rephaeli, Yochy Investments, and Seed Fund 1776.

According to a report appearing in the San Francisco-based techcrunch.com website, Meredith Circerchia, a linguist and the startup's director of communications and e-learning, said the fresh capital will be used to offer Lingua.ly's free tools, which are available online as a chrome extension besides as Android and iOS apps, to new platforms and markets.

Lingua.ly's plans to monetize through premium features that it will release on the web and its apps later this year.

Lingua.ly is a nifty tool for aspiring polyglots because it has flashcards with recorded pronunciations, a dictionary, a repetition game to help with memorization, and several categories of articles to browse so users can see the words in common usage, instead of the more formal and stilted examples often found in textbooks.

Lingua.ly is part of a growing trend of digital language education startups, including Memrise, Busuu, Babbel and Duolingo that are attracting significant investment funding and unseating former industry leader Rosetta Stone.

Lingua.ly's already has full support for ten languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Russian, Arabic, and Hebrew.

Users studying other languages can make flashcards and look up words in Lingua.ly's dictionary, but they lack the benefit of audio pronunciations and articles.