Noon Academy Raise $8.6million in its first ever Institutional Capital Round

From the past couple of years, the Ed-tech industry is getting momentum in the Middle East. In its first-ever institutional capital series A funding, Noon Academy, an online learning platform based in Saudi Arabia, has raised $8.6million.

The fresh fundings will help the company to expand itself to other emerging markets as well as enroll 50 million new students under its belt. The engineering and the product teams of the platform will be boosted by the funding.

The funding round was led by Raed Ventures and STV. Other participants in the fundings were Saudi Venture Capital Company and Ali Samiah Investment, an institutional investor. There were also few angel investors in the fundings; namely Careem, the co-founder of Noon Academy, Abdulla Elyas, and Elm’s CEO Dr. Abdul Rahman Aljadhai, alongside Mazen Aljubai.

Incorporated in 2013, Noon Academy was founded by two Saudi businessmen. The platform initially had just two teachers and less than 30 students. Currently, there are over 2 million students in the platform along with 1,500 certified teachers in Saudi Arabia.

The online platform is based on a “freemium” revenue model which provides tutoring and free educational contents to the users. The users can go through the basic content without paying but charges are levied for accessing the private tutor’s zone and advanced contents.

As per a report published by EdTechXGlobal, by 2020, EdTech funding is expected to hit the $252 billion mark worldwide.