Highlights:
- Kidato, an online school for K-12 students in Africa.
- YC-backed Kidato raises $1.4M seed to scale its online school for K-12 students in Africa.
- The investors who participated in the round are Learn Start Capital, Launch Africa Ventures Fund, Graph Ventures and Century Oak Capital, among other notable local and global angel investors.
- The company has also implemented after-school programs like robotics and chess, art, coding, and debate classes.
Introduction:
Kidato is an online school for K-12 kids with a vision to provide a high-quality, affordable education to the growing middle class in Africa.
YC-backed Kidato raises $1.4M seed to scale its online school for K-12 students in Africa.
Kidato, an online school for K-12 students in Africa, presents another alternative and is announcing today that it has closed its $1.4 million seed investment.
The investors who participated in the round are Learn Start Capital, Launch Africa Ventures Fund, Graph Ventures and Century Oak Capital, among other notable local and global angel investors.
Kidato was founded by Kenyan serial entrepreneur Sam Gichuru in 2020. As a father of three kids, he encountered similar problems facing the average Kenyan middle-class professional, one of which was struggling to keep up with private school exorbitant tuition fees as high as $8,000 yearly.
First is the overcrowded nature of these schools. Typically, public schools have a teacher-to-student ratio of 1:50 while private schools are at 1:20. “Depending on how much you pay for school fees. The more prestigious the school, the smaller the teacher-to-student ratio. That for me was a big indicator. You want to have a small number of students per teacher,” added Gichuru.
Then there’s the issue of long and tiring commutes for students. Gichuru tells me that kids going to private schools in Nairobi would have to wake up by 5 a.m. They would prepare to get on the bus at 6 a.m. Eventually, they will get to school at 7 a.m.
Kidato wants to make learning fun and gratifying.
Kidato wants to make learning fun and gratifying. The business trains its 740 teachers on how to make classes interactive. They do this by using the context of arcade games. These games include Minecraft and Roblox to tailor lessons taught to students in different subjects.
Building an online school for kids while capitalizing on the advantages of parents’ new remote work culture also got the Kenyan startup accepted into Y Combinator in January. Since then, Kidato has on boarded more than 50 students and claims to be growing at a 100% quarter on quarter.
The company has also implemented after-school programs like robotics and chess, art, coding, and debate classes. Typically, they are usually among students from affluent schools. However, they are under democratization by Kidato for more than 700 students. They have registration that use its platform. The students are mainly from Canada, Kenya, Malawi. It also includes students from Switzerland, Tanzania, UK, United States, and UAE. They pay $5 per lesson, the company reveals.