As it strives to grow its community-based concept, the popular online tutoring platform AlGooru looks to expand beyond Saudi boundaries.
The edtech industry in the Middle East has been characterised primarily by its rising hyper-localisation and shift towards community-based formats, as evident by a number of exits and acquisitions.
The purchase of Jeddah’s ChillLearn by on-demand tuition platform AlGooru has demonstrated both of these arguments successfully in Saudi Arabia.
AlGooru, founded in 2019 by Khalid Abou Kassem, connects students with tutors whilst attempting to build a community that may profit from commonalities. The closure of a $600K seed investment led by Nawa International, Oqal Angel Network, and Techstars in November 2021, that followed entry into the Techstars Riyadh seed accelerator, is one of the company’s small but important achievements.
MENA Region’s EdTech Sector Eyes Impending Growth
While ChillLearn, founded in 2019, has a long list of accomplishments, including being named the TechChampions Accelerator by the country’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. It presently promises to assist over 5,000 students as a tuition portal, which will now be merged into AlGooru’s community, which includes 450 verified private teachers who cover over 210 academic and non-academic disciplines.
The MENA edtech industry had a 104 per cent year-over-year increase in capital investment, narrowly missing the $60 million milestone. Snykers’ acquisition of Lebanese edtech Ostaz and Abwaab of Jordan’s takeover of Edmatrix were two notable acquisitions.
Though some may argue that such numbers are small in comparison to those in other industries, the pandemic’s acceleration of edtech solutions has fully outpaced the deployment of virtual learning, and these advances are now seen as improvements rather than solutions.
A hyper-localized community network is an exciting idea within the remote-functioning that the edtech trend has promoted. Instead of attempting to link global communities, perhaps the best use of edtech is to establish local communities.
