The round was led by Acumen Fund ,with participation from Save the Children Impact Investment Fund, Verdant Frontiers Fintech and Logos Ventures , Nairobi Business Angels Network (NaiBAN), and Melvyn Lubega, co-founder of Go1, an Australia-based edtech unicorn. Zeraki co-founder and CEO Isaac Nyangolo, in an interview with Techcrunch said, they’re planning to introduce more administrative tools for schools such as timetabling software, and support parents with fee loans. The company was co-founded by Nyangolo and Erick Oude (COO) in 2014, as an interactive digital learning platform for high school students, which included quizzes and performance tracking system. It has also added a bulk messaging service for internal and external communication, and a feature that allows parents to track students performance and fee payment. Their data analytics system help schools to better manage their students’ data by allowing teachers to upload students’ grades from their mobile phones, and give a performance breakdown for each student, subject or stream. According to Nyangolo , more than 5,000 schools with a total of 2 million students are using the data analytics platform, the numbers are expected to grow after the launch in new markets and as more schools embrace digital tools to streamline their administrative tasks. “Education is yet to be digitalized across most countries in Africa, and there is greater opportunity for us to build this market. Laying that foundation that introduces countries, schools and parents on how technology can solve the problems we have in education and being one of the companies in Africa that have shown that it is possible to do this at scale makes this an exciting opportunity,” he said. “We plan on building more administrative tools for schools, and payment products on the parents’ side. We have also brought back focus on digital learning platform, and also tested a number of products like timetabling,” he added. The edtech is also planning to expand to 10 new markets over the next three years, after successfully scaling in their current markets including Kenya, Uganda and Guinea. “We’re expanding first into the regions that we understand and have similar business environments. We plan on first moving into the entire East Africa community and then exploring the Anglophone region,” said Nyangolo.
