After 4 years of establishment, with the growth of the English learning market as well as the achievements that Edupia has achieved, ThinkZone Ventures decided to invest and accompany the team to help millions of rural students learn English better. Let's learn a little about Edupia to better understand this edtech startup before getting to the reasons why ThinkZone Ventures decided to invest!

Introducing Edupia

In 2018, Edupia was born with the goal of helping millions of children in rural areas learn English more effectively. The startup provides a platform to support learning English according to international school standards, designed closely to the curriculum of primary and secondary school textbooks. The vision that this company aims for is to improve the learning quality of students in rural areas, in order to shorten the gap in academic qualifications with urban students, in which English is one of the subjects with the most disparities. 

Edupia knows how to seize market opportunities, ensuring growth in the next 5 - 10 years

General market demand tends to continue to increase 

The online learning market, especially the demand for foreign language learning, in Vietnam is on the rise. Vietnam is considered one of the 10 fastest growing Edtech markets worldwide (according to Vietnam Edtech Report, 2021), it is predicted that this market will reach 3 billion USD by 2023 with an average growth rate of 20.2%/year from 2019 - 2023.  

The market that Edupia is targeting still has much potential to be exploited

Currently, Edupia has more than 450,000 paying customers, but this is only a small part of the entire Vietnamese education industry with about 20 million students from kindergarten to grade 12, with about 13 - 15 million in primary and secondary schools alone. The need to learn English in rural areas and tier 2 and 3 cities is huge, no less than the need to learn foreign languages ​​in big cities. However, the foreign language learning market here has not really developed, most still follow the method of opening extra classes with teachers in the area and the curriculum still depends heavily on textbooks. 

On the other hand, it was very difficult for technology startups to access the education market in rural areas, or in urban areas of class 2 and 3 because many households did not have smart devices for their children to study. However, since 2019, when the COVID - 19 epidemic broke out in Vietnam, families gradually had to invest in equipment for their children to learn online. Thanks to that, the market has overcome technological barriers, helping edtech startups like Edupia to easily access the market. 

Product - a key factor that helps lead to investment decisions 

A solid technology foundation is the foundation for creating a good learning program

To achieve the milestone of more than 5,000,000 users in Southeast Asia, Edupia possesses a solid foundation that allows maintaining large traffic volumes, and a good user experience to retain customers. In addition, Edupia has also integrated the I-speak feature based on AI technology to help students practice pronunciation and communication right on the platform, helping more than 300,000 elementary school students boldly speak English in just 3 months. 

Good teaching quality creates prestige for the Edupia brand 

Expert Adam Lewis - Edupia's Training Director - an Education expert in the field of language accompanies Edupia to build an English program with millions of learners. With more than 9 years of leadership and teaching experience at famous international schools in Vietnam such as Sentia, Wellspring, St Paul America, Mr. Adam understands what Edupia needs to do to improve the quality of teaching, providing a good program for Vietnamese students. In addition, the online center model combining a platform-based learning program and a team of offline support instructors helps Edupia closely follow the learning situation, improving the efficiency of students' knowledge acquisition, something that is difficult to see in other English learning apps. 

Edupia's customer retention rate of nearly 60% proves the teaching quality of this platform, which is a very high retention level compared to other edtech startups in the Vietnamese market. 

The model's ability to succeed has been proven 

ThinkZone Ventures highly appreciates the impressive growth rate of Edupia, the No. 1 edtech startup in English teaching in Vietnam. After the capital call in early September 2022, the company raised the total capital raised to 16 million USD. Edupia also has a positive revenue level, total revenue in 2021 increased 3 times compared to 2020 and 9 times compared to 2019. The large amount of capital mobilized and impressive revenue has brought Edupia to many other markets in Southeast Asia, mainly the countries of Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia. 

Founder's dedication to improving the English skills of rural children

Leaving the leadership position at Viettel, with a long history of operating and developing businesses, Mr. Tran Duc Hung, Founder & CEO of Edupia, is determined to establish this startup, following the arduous path to improve the quality of English learning for students in rural areas, helping to balance the opportunity to access education compared to urban students. 

For all of the above reasons, ThinkZone Ventures confidently invests and accompanies Edupia to bring effective English learning solutions to students across Southeast Asia. ThinkZone Ventures will bring the best resources to Edupia to realize this vision.