Lagos-based early-stage venture capital firm, Microtraction, yesterday announced its investment in edtech startup, Gradely. It is Microtraction’s first investment in 2020 after investing in Festival Coins last year.
We are excited to announce our investment in @GradelyNG
Gradely provides an adaptive learning platform that helps parents and schools identify and close student learning gaps. https://t.co/WYYX2zJi5T
— microtraction (@microtraction) April 1, 2020
Last month, Microtraction changed its standard investment deal of $15,000 for 7.5% equity to $25,000 for 7% equity, making Gradely the first recipient of the new deal and Microtraction’s second announced investment in an edtech startup after investing in Schoolable (formerly Allpro) in 2018.
The edtech startup provides an adaptive learning platform that helps parents and schools identify student learning gaps quickly and recommends specific ways to close those gaps.
According to Microtraction, Gradely is solving a problem students and schools, especially secondary schools, have faced for quite some time -- the inability of parents and teachers to know the performance of students before the end of each term and determine when there’s a knowledge gap in each student’s learning process.
Gradely was founded in 2019 by Boye Oshinaga, Femi Ibiwoye, Seyi Adelaju, and Babatunde Caleb.
Before becoming co-founder and CEO of Gradely, Oshinaga worked at Venture Garden Group (VGG) and co-founded edtech startup, Youngsoul Ng and fintech startup, Riby Finance. Like Oshinaga, other co-founders have experiences in founding or working in educational technology companies.
It seems funding in Nigeria's educational tech space is finally picking up and investments in startups like Gradely and uLesson will contribute a large part in addressing the challenges around education in Nigeria.