Korean edtech startup Gguge scores $10m in Series A funding

Korean K-12 edtech startup Gguge, which has been heralded as the “Outschool of Asia”, announced that it has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round backed by Korea Investment Partners (KIP), Murex Partners, and PKSHA Capital from Japan.

The Korean startup is an education platform that offers online classes for students between the ages of 3 and 18. The platform encourages students to explore topics based on their interests by offering a selection of more than 5,000 online classes taught live via Zoom. Independent instructors engage the students with active learning methods that range from reading newspapers and solving puzzles, to incorporating Minecraft and Pokémon games into the classes.

For the past couple of years, there has been a significant shift in the way we view the workplace and classroom. Remote learning, in particular, has experienced a spike in interest and edtech startups such as Gguge have been quick to realize its potential and jumped on the $254.80 billion global edtech market to capitalize their chance on its ever-growing possibility, according to the announcement

Launched by its parent company, Glorang Inc in 2020, Gguge claims to now have over 100,000 users in Korea and is rapidly growing with a new user acquisition rate averaging more than 40% each month.

As a strong contender in the substantial education market like Asia, the platform seeks to differentiate itself from ‘Outschool’ by providing its services in local languages. The company is expected to enter the Japanese and Malaysian markets by Q4 2022 and is planning on expanding to Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam in the following years.

“The education market in the English-speaking and North American regions is undoubtedly very large. However, we at Gguge and Glorang understand that the local D2C education market of each country in Asia can be just as substantial,” Taeil Hwang, Founder and CEO of Ggguge said.

“As a team that understands both the local culture and strategies in Asia, we are confident that our platform will have a strong standing in Asia’s ever-growing D2C education market,” he added.

Hwang was selected in 2021 as one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Leaders in Consumer Technology in Asia.