Korea's Google-backed Mathpresso raises $70m
Seoul-based education technology start-up Mathpresso has closed its Series C round on USD 70m following an investment of undisclosed size last year from Google.
The latest tranche featured Goodwater Capital, SoftBank Ventures Asia, and Mirae Asset Venture Investment. They were joined by Signite Partners, a corporate VC arm of Shinsegae Group, and YBM, one of Korea’s largest education management companies.
Mathpresso is best known as the operator of Qanda, a K-12 math tutoring service that is considered one of Asia’s largest education apps. Qanda uses optical character recognition technology to recognise text and mathematical formulas in photos. It is said to provide detailed solutions and personalised learning content catered to each user’s level.
The app has accumulated more than 75m registered users in over 50 countries since its launch in 2016, according to a statement. This compares to about 45m users at the time of the Google investment.
Around 85% of users reside outside of Korea, with the strongest user bases including Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand. About 11m photos are uploaded globally per day.
Mathpresso plans to use the fresh capital to strengthen its vertical services and execution strategy. Recent traction in this vein includes the launch of Qanda Tutor, a tablet-based one-on-one online tutoring service, and Qanda Study, an online live group class in Vietnam.
GGV Capital and Korean VC firm Yellowdog were also among the earlier Series C backers. There were four prior rounds worth a combined USD 20m from the likes of SoftBank Ventures Asia, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, InterVest, Legend Capital, New Paradigm Investment, Mega Investment, and Smilegate Investment
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