InvestEd, an education technology (edtech) startup that offers a loan program to college students in the Philippines, has made it to the fifth cohort of Singapore’s first educational technology accelerator EduSpaze.
The startup is the only Philippine-based edtech company that has made it to the cohort of nine Asian startups that are joining the accelerator program.
The other eight are Scribo Holdings (Singapore/Australia), a startup that helps better student engagement for their writing tasks; Eduku (Indonesia), a provider of multi-platform learning management system to schools; EduPrime (Indonesia), the country’s leading assessment platform; Dystech (Australia), an online reading assessment platform; and Top-BOSS (Taiwan), a provider of cloud, mobile, and digital game-based contests for business and management training.
Also in the cohort are ChampsLMS (Singapore), a provider of cloud-based SaaS model learning management system for K-12 schools, tertiary education, and corporate training; Datality Lab (Singapore/Hong Kong), a data science consultancy startup; and HeyHi (Singapore), a multi-platform lightweight whiteboard for educators and students.
InvestEd and the other eight edtech startups will take part in the three-month virtual program and will receive up to a S$1 million ($726,000) investment as well as mentor support.
The aim of the program is to help the participants accelerate their progress in developing and honing their market fit, product development, scalability, revenue generation, and attraction of further investments.
“Over the last few years, we have continued to see great strides in education, especially edtech. The adoption of digital solutions is continually on the rise, and we continue to see impressive innovation from startups across the region,” said EduSpaze managing director Alex Ng.
EduSpaze is managed by seed capital firm and incubator Spaze Ventures and also receives support from Singapore government entity Enterprise Singapore, the statement said.
Being selected in the program, InvestEd now joins the legacy of previous cohort participants such as Skilio, LingoTalk, ACKTEC Technologies, and AkadAsia, which have successfully raised from EduSpaze and other partners.
On its website, InvestEd said it provides loan products to help students succeed in every state of their college life. The loans can be used for tuition, allowance, gadgets, internships, and more.
Aside from the financial aspect of the loan, InvestEd also assigns a personal coach to students who have availed of the loan to guide them in matters of academics, career, money, love, or family.
In June, Edukasyon.ph, another edtech startup based in the Philippines, raised a convertible note with backing from a number of investors, including follow-on investors KSR Ventures and Lorinet Foundation, and new investor Bisk Ventures.