Lingokids raises $7.3mn funding from HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, others

English learning platform Lingokids Tuesday said it has raised USD 7.3 million (about Rs 53.5 crore) in a funding led by HV Holtzbrinck Ventures.

The funding round also saw participation from existing investors JME Venture Capital, Sabadell Ventures, Big Sur Ventures and Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX.

Lingokids founder and CEO Cristobal Viedma said Silicon Valley ed-tech investor Reach Capital, Athos Capital, and All Iron Ventures, were also part of the funding round.

The fund raise will go towards accelerating growth, hiring new talent, and developing features to promote personalised learning and parental involvement, Viedma told PTI.

"The funding will allow us to increase our content offering which we will keep to a global content strategy as we have been so far. At the same time, we will work on localising the app to fit the language needs for parents to navigate in Hindi, for example," he added.

The company has also received a USD 1.3 million grant from the EU's H2020 programme, raising the startup's total funding to over USD 11 million last year.

Launched in 2016, Lingokids offers a language-learning platform to teach English to children from 2-8 years of age, designed with Oxford University Press content.

The subscription-based platform teaches English through a series of activities, games, and songs that adapt in difficulty to each child's level. It has over seven million registered families across more than 180 countries.

"India is the number one market when it comes to registrations with over 4,00,000 families.

"Our user base in India grew 5 times from 2016 to 2017, which was the highest growth we've seen in any market when it comes to user base. When it comes to subscriptions and revenues, the US and Brazil are our strongest markets...," Viedma said.

The company is based in Madrid and San Francisco with long term plans of expanding further into its priority markets.