Egyptian Edtech iSchool Raises $4.5 Million in Seed Round

iSchool, an online education platform based in Dublin, Ireland, has raised $4.5 million in a funding round led by VentureWave Capital, an Irish venture capital firm. Other participants in the funding round include OneStop Capital UK, Webit Investment Network, and Oraseya Capital, the Venture Capital arm of Dubai Integrated Economic Zones Authority.

The platform provides live gamified classes taught by top coding instructors, targeting students aged 6 to 18. Their curriculum covers a range of topics, including AI, VR, App Development, Game Development, and Web Development, with a focus on building foundational concepts from an early age.

Established in 2018, iSchool was founded as a solution for the 100 million students lacking access to technology education curriculums or programs in the MENA region. The founders, drawing from their own experiences of challenges in tech education, aimed to improve student access to essential learning tools. Through operational excellence, iSchool has achieved 72% customer retention month over month. Currently boasting more than 26,000 live learners, over 1 million training hours delivered, and 10 million lines of code written by its students, iSchool has collaborated with 35 schools and managed national-level initiatives in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

“We started out by teaching tech for K12 students, and today we are giving the world access to thousands of top-notch coding instructors from their comfort at home with a click of a button,” Muhammad Gawish, Co-Founder and CEO at iSchool, tells StartupScene. “Our mission is to empower today’s generations to become tomorrow's technology leaders beginning in the Middle East and Africa, spreading to the rest of the world. Using dynamic technology and a deep understanding of the end-to-end live classes process, we are growing a simple idea into a product that we believe can improve the lives of millions of people."

Building on these achievements, iSchool Holdings is expanding its global presence by establishing itself in Ireland. The newly secured funding will propel the company's swift expansion into six additional countries in the MENA region. The focus is on scaling its 'Online Coding Platform' technologically and extending its gamified online classroom app service into Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, iSchool plans to grow a new team in Dublin to support its global ambitions and further enhance its offerings in online coding education.