Asia Partners leads $35m round for Hong Kong's Snapask

Korea's InterVest and China's Ondine Capital also participated. Snapask has raised $50 million to date, with previous backers including Kejora Ventures, Longling Capital, Welight Capital, Chinacceelrator, and the now defunct SPH Plug and Play accelerator. 

Founded in 2015, Snapask provides on-demand tutoring to some three million students across eight markets in Asia by connecting them with around 350,000 tutors. Its flagship mobile app aims to provide instant academic coaching as well as exam preparation via self-directed videos and online quizzes. The service analyzes learning activities to improve tutor matching, and uses artificial intelligence to personalize user engagement.

Snapask also offers Wizmo, an enterprise product that supports teachers and schools in sourcing learning-related data to generate classroom-relevant insights. Its most recent launch is Sofasoda, which provides interactive courses in soft skills to prepare recent university graduates and young professionals for the workplace. The company claims revenue grew more than 100% during 2019.

"Under [founder and CEO] Timothy Yu's strong leadership, Snapask has built a superb ecosystem for learning, leveraging technology to create a deeply personalized journey for each student," Nick Nash, a managing partner at Asia Partners, said in a statement. "We could not be more impressed by the company's growth trajectory, business model, and societal impact, and look forward to many years of partnership together."

Nash is the former group president of Sea, a mobile internet and gaming platform formerly known as Garena. He set up Asia Partners last year with Oliver Rippel, formerly of South African conglomerate Naspers. The firm is currently in the market with its debut fund, which had raised about $118 million as of a second close earlier this year. 

This is Asia Partners' second confirmed investment. Its first was in August last year with participation in a $70 million Series C round for Singapore hotel management and booking platform RedDoorz. That came less than a month after the start-up closed a $45 million Series B.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Early-stage
• Consumer
• Singapore
• InterVest
• Education
• TMT
• Hong Kong (China)