Nigerian Edtech Startup ULesson Raises $3.1m

• Nigerian Edtech Startup ULesson Raises $3.1m

ULesson, an Edtech startup, has raised $3.1 million in a seed round led by TLcom Capital.

ULesson seeks to bridge educational gaps — for secondary school students — with an integrated self-pace mobile learning platform that comes with SD Cards, culture-specific curriculum and a network of tutors.

Sim Shagaya, who founded e-commerce giant Konga and ad venture E-Motion, founded ULesson in 2019 in Lagos with a production studio in Jos.

According to Shagaya, ULesson is in a developmental stage and expected to hit the market in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Gambia by February 2020.

“We’re targeting Anglophone West Africa…for a market of effectively 300 million people,” he said.

Speaking on demand, Shagaya said despite priority placed on education in West Africa, there is a big gap as the ratio of student to teacher is as high as 70:1 in nations like Nigeria.

“We have this massive gap…We’re adding more babies in this country nominally than all of Western Europe…Even if the [Nigerian] government was super efficient, it couldn’t catch up with the educational needs of the young people that are coming up.

“If you drill down to it all, all our problems in Africa are tied this problem of education…If we do this right, our impact will be huge. For me this is probably the most important work I’ll do,” he said.