London based Edtech startup BibliU has raised €550K in a Series A extension funding round. The funding was supported by Angel Investment Network (AIN) which is the largest group of online Angel investors consisting of more than 3,00,000 investors at present. This campaign funding round was conducted to bring digital libraries to more universities and meet the increasing demands of customers amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
BibliU is an Education technology startup that provides digital textbooks to Universities, libraries, and students. The company was founded in 2014 by Oxford University student David Sherwood along with four other co-founders. Their major customers include Coventry University, Oxford University, Imperial College London, and the University of Pheonix. BibliU works with more than 40% of the Universities in the UK and has around 2000 individual publishers to bring complete systematic online content to their users. The contents are licensed directly to the Universities who provide access to their students and the costs are included in tuition fees.
BibliU raised an amount of $10M (~€7.6M) earlier this year in April 2020, as Series A funding. Nesta Impact investments led this round of funding with participation from Guinness Asset Management. The original investor of the company was Oxford Sciences Innovation who remains among the board of directors for the company.
The funding will be used for new technical hiring and improving technicalities to support the increase in demands by Universities.
David Sherwood, CEO & Co-founder of BibliU said, “ BibiU has seen rapid growth across the globe over the last few months, and we believe COVID has pulled the transition to digital learning forward by at least 5 years. We have always existed to assist universities with this transition, by providing an unmatched student experience in a cost-effective way. BibliU is the perfect intersection for Universities that are looking to create a seamless distance learning experience and do so in a way that introduces operational efficiencies to their workflows. We are thrilled that AIN was able to assist us in this rapid extension to our series A, and are excited to see where this round takes us.”
Sam Louis from Angel Investment Agency who led this funding stated that “ BibliU sits at a fantastic intersection of traditional learning structures and digital evolution. The business has broad-reaching applications, a strong business model and most importantly, it delivers real value to its users.”
“Edtech is toughis a tough and to gain real traction and I think what BibliU has stands apart from many of the others which is why we have seen such great uptake from investors. The COVID lockdowns have now accelerated adoption of digital learning and hopefully, this will lead the way for more sustained growth in the Edtech space of BibliU,” he added.
