Japanese e-learning startup Schoo raises $2.9 million

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This is the abridged version from our original article in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Schoo, the company that provides e-learning solutions using online lecture movies, announced that it has fundraised 340 million yen (about $2.9 million) in January from Dentsu Digital Holdings and Link and Motivation with participation from existing investors; Itochu Technology Ventures, Anri, and Incubate Fund.

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This is the third round for the company, following their previous funding worth 150 million yen ($1.5 million) back in June 2013. Schoo CEO Kenshiro Mori told us his team has been verifying a hypothesis theory in since the previous funding round. As part of this verification process, they adopted a new system establishing four departments (web design, business English, startup, and programming) in the e-learning platform like a typical university, where they selected highly-acclaimed lecture videos and sorted them out by subject.

After establishing these departments, their conversion rate for premium services and user activity rate were improved, in addition to users spontaneously starting to form a community in each department.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by Kurt Hanson
Proofread by “Tex” Pomeroy