Mediahuis Ventures, Raine Ventures and Evli Growth Partners are pleased to announce their recent investment in Perlego, a digital platform providing students and professionals access to 250,000 educational books from more than 600 publishers. Perlego’s mission is to make learning more accessible for everyone.
Perlego will use this new funding to accelerate its ambitious growth plans: expanding its catalogue of titles, enhancing UX across all platforms, further developing its AI capabilities and building out a freemium tier offering. Moreover, Perlego will enter new markets including the US, Nordic countries and the Far East to establish the world’s definitive education digital library.
The round is led by Mediahuis Ventures (MHV) – an early-stage venture fund managed by Mediahuis Group – with contributions also coming from Raine Ventures, an investor focused on building global consumer brands and Evli Growth Partners, a Finnish early stage venture capital investor focussing on technology-driven growth companies with high scale potential.
Following the announcement of this cornerstone financing round, MHV partner Thierry Stern and Raine Venture partner Azadeh Enshaeifar will join the board alongside previous investors Mark Beith (Hoxton Ventures), Anna Ottosson (Littlerock) and Ike Amadi (Amino Capital).
Overview of Perlego
Perlego, a London-based Edtech platform, has recently announced that it has raised $50M in a Series B funding round. The round was led by Mediahuis Ventures, Raine Ventures and Evli Growth Partners.
The platform was founded in 2015 and aims to make quality learning materials available to everyone. Perlego has over 2 million users and 2,400 titles from 300 leading publishers.
This article will provide a brief overview of Perlego and will discuss the company’s recent funding round.
Background
Perlego is a digital subscription platform that gives unlimited access to more than 300,000 online learning materials across various subject areas. They revolutionize the way students around the world access learning materials by removing friction in their purchasing process.
Using Perlego, learners have limitless digital access to titles from over 400 professional publishers with an easy-to-use searchable platform and mobile app. This prevents people from spending excessively on new books and keeps them up-to-date with the latest releases. Moreover, some titles offer interactive videos, summaries and podcasts for enhanced user experience during their studies.
The platform was founded in London in 2016 by its current CEO Gauthier Van Malderen and CTO Mathieu Nouzareth who wanted to make learning materials more easily accessible for students worldwide. To date, Perlego has already raised €2 million from early investors such as Connect Ventures and entrepeneur Xavier Niel.
What is Perlego
Perlego is an all-in-one digital learning platform launched in 2017, and headquartered in London. The company offers unlimited access to over 300,000 books, textbooks and documents published by more than 350 publishers worldwide. With registrations from students and professionals, Perlego aims to become the future of digital learning by delivering the best-in-class online library for individuals globally.
In 2019, the company secured a £4 million investment round from Mediahuis Ventures (the investment arm of Mediahuis NV), Raine Ventures and Evli Growth Partners to accelerate product development around creating new consumer experiences across web and mobile applications as well as developing its AI-driven search capabilities. The funds will also be used for marketing, as Perlego plans to expand across Europe.
With this strategic alliance with Mediahuis Ventures, Perlego have demonstrated their ambition to become the largest online library of professional books and course material available on mobile devices. They are driving both innovation and convenience within the education market with easy access to titles that would otherwise be hard or costly to acquire in physical book format – an offering that has been welcomed across various countries since its launch.
Investment Details
Edtech platform Perlego, has announced that it has raised $50M in a Series B round of funding. The funding round was led by Mediahuis Ventures, Raine Ventures and Evli Growth Partners. This brings Perlego’s total funding to date to $60M.
Through this strategic investment, Perlego plans to accelerate its growth and become one of the global leaders in edtech.
Overview of Mediahuis Ventures, Raine Ventures and Evli Growth Partners
Mediahuis Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Mediahuis, a company listed in the Belgian and Dutch stock exchange. Founded in April 2020, it invests in companies all over Europe focusing on technology-based solutions. Its portfolio includes companies such as Re(Wireme) and Viddo.
Raine Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in growth-stage media, entertainment, sports and technology companies. Founded in 2008 by a collaboration between WPP, 21st Century Fox and The Raine Group, their portfolio includes leading European companies such as Deltatre and AllSaints.
Evli Growth Partners is an independent growth-stage venture capital company focusing on European companies with unique propositions or international potentials. It has invested in more than 45 companies including AIVI Technologies and Storytel. Evli Growth Partners has offices in Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen and London.
Investment Amount
Mediahuis Ventures, Raine Ventures and Evli Growth Partners have announced their investment into Perlego, the leading online textbook platform. This round of funding brings the total amount invested in company by Mediahuis Ventures to €8.25 million. It is the first time that Raine Ventures or Evli Growth Partners has invested into the business. The investment will enable Perlego to further establish market leadership in tech-enabled education worldwide.
The new round of funding led by Mediahuis Ventures includes €4 million from Perlego’s existing shareholders and strategic partners, as well as€4.25 million from a new group of investors: Mediahuis Ventures, Raine Ventures, and Evli Growth Partners.
Mediahuis Ventures was founded in 2020 with a focus on backing innovative European scale-ups, while Raine Ventures is an independent venture capital firm investing exclusively in digital media companies worldwide. Evans Li Growth Partners is a private equity fund managed by EFG Private Bank based in Finland which invests solely in small to mid-cap growth companies with global ambitions.
This additional capital will allow Perlego to solidify its international expansion plans as well accelerate its core platform development efforts as it looks to unlock even more value for students around the world looking for greater access to quality university textbooks at an affordable price.
Use of Funds
Perlego, a UK-based all-you-can-read digital textbook subscription service, has announced that it has raised a total of £11.3 million in growth capital. The round was led by existing shareholders Mediahuis Ventures, Raine Ventures and Evli Growth Partners and new investors DN Capital and Frog Capital.
Perlego will use this new funding to accelerate international expansion, further invest in its proprietary technology platform, scale its Product and Content teams and continue to attract leading industry talent.
With over 725 institutions enrolled on the platform in over 140 countries worldwide, Perlego supports students from British universities such as the University of Sheffield to top US Ivy League institutions like Yale and Stanford. The company is currently available in major markets such as the UK, US, Canada, Australia & New Zealand as well as Continental Europe.
Impact of Investment
The recent investment of $50M Series B from Mediahuis Ventures, Raine Ventures, and Evli Growth Partners into edtech platform Perlego has the potential to make a lasting impact on the edtech industry. It will help Perlego to fuel its growth and reach its goals, as well as provide other companies in the sector with access to capital and resources.
Let’s explore the impact of this investment in more detail.
Expansion of Services
The new investments will allow Perlego, the world’s largest digital library of educational and professional ebooks, to expand its services. The company aims to further develop existing solutions as well as introduce new solutions for both students and professionals, including corporate training and courses.
The investment comes when demand for learning solutions has been increasing rapidly. In 2020 alone, Perlego recorded 600% growth in orders from individuals and saw a 400% increase in institutional sign-ups. This can be attributed to the shift towards more digital learning due to the pandemic, with many institutions now looking for technology solutions that can better support their students.
Perlego plans to use the investment to focus on customer experience by introducing new ways of content delivery. This includes features such as advanced search options, collaborative tools and personalization tools that allows users to customize their learning experience. Additionally, Perlego will use this funding opportunity to launch its first dedicated mobile product and improve its existing web platform.
To meet the needs of business customers, Perlego intends develop its corporate offering including specialized corporate e-learning programmes tailored specifically around organizational needs in both B2B and B2C markets. The company’s platform already offers over 250 course providers covering multiple categories designed for employees of any industry or level of seniority ranging from nursing upskilling programs through coding boot camps downregulation ready education packs for lawyers and accountants.
Growth of User Base
The new investment will enable Perlego to drive its growth and international expansion strategy, allowing it to achieve its vision of becoming the world’s leading digital platform for academic and professional books.
Perlego’s user base has grown rapidly since the company launched in 2016, reaching more than 300,000 members across 255 countries. This will be further bolstered by the introduction of several new features that are still in development. Over the next 12 months, Perlego will work with Mediahuis Ventures, Raine Ventures and Evli Growth Partners to create highly personalized student experiences, expand content availability and accessibility worldwide, and grow its leverage of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).
The three investors bring valuable industry connections and strategic guidance to accelerate Perlego’s growth plans over the next several years. Together they will look to develop a network of like-minded partners focused on innovation in education who can help deliver maximum value to our customers.
Conclusion
The investment from Mediahuis Ventures, Raine Ventures and Evli Growth Partners marks a significant milestone for Perlego as it continues to expand its platform, develop new technologies and grow its global user base.
Perlego is committed to enabling students from all backgrounds to have access to affordable educational materials and facilitating lifelong learning for everyone.
This partnership between Perlego and all three investors will help the company reach its goals by giving it the resources and support needed to further expand its platform, create innovative products and services, bring more content onto the platform, further expand into Europe and build an even stronger community of engaged learners worldwide.
tags = Perlego, online textbook subscription service, Mediahuis, Evli Growth Partners, $50 million Series B funding, perlego 50m series ventureslundentechcrunch, perlego 50m mediahuis ventureslundentechcrunch, make learning more affordable and accessible
