10 Minute School aims to democratize education for Bangladeshi students
Summary
This brings 10MS total raised to $7.5 million.10MS offers live-streamed classes for K12 students, pre-recorded lessons, university admission test prep and personalized quizzes, among other content, that can be accessed through a smartphone app. 52% of its students are from rural and semi-urban areas outside of Dhaka, and 34% are girls (one of 10MSs goals is to address gender inequalities in education).The companys new round comes from a combination of private and government investors. The funding was led by Conjunction Capital, with participation from returning investor Peak XVs Surge (formerly Sequoia Capital India), the Bangladesh governments sovereign venture fund, Startup Bangladesh Limited, CRED founder and CEO Kunal Shah, MyAsiaVC managing partner Sajid Rahman and several local angel investors.Co-founder Ayman Sadiq started 10MS as a YouTube channel in 2015. So that instantly gave us an idea of, okay, we can actually monetize some of our offerings and solutions and make a sustainable business out of it.The fledging company started looking for investors, and in 2022, it raised $2 million in seed funding led by Surge, Sequoia Indias (now Peak XV) scale-up program.Now that 10MS has raised its pre-Series A, it plans to invest in its tech capabilities, content and operations, says co-founder and COO Mirza Salman Hossain Beg. He added that 10MS goal is to provide personalized learning experiences for students by using AI and it will bring in more engineers and product managers to support its tech development.Another major area of investment for 10MS is content that fits with Bangladeshs evolving K12 curriculum.