Contemporary education: MAGNiTT interviews Abwaab, following the Edtech startup's $2.4M fundraise
Q1) To start, tell us briefly about Abwaab in layman's terms. How exactly does it work?
Abwaab is an online learning platform for secondary school students in MENA that offers programs tailored to each country and grade. Students get to watch engaging video lessons for a range of different subjects, continuously assess themselves by taking various quizzes and tests, and monitor their academic performance with our performance-tracking features.
Q2) What's Abwaab's big-picture vision for the future?
Personalising the learning experience for each and every student using AI technology.
Q3) Safe to assume that after a $2.4M fundraise, Abwaab is going to have some exciting growth plans. Can you share some of Abwaab's plans for expansion with us (geographic, product, talent)?
- Continue developing our platform
- Start working on developing our app
- Build the infrastructure for curated learning/AI integration
- Widen our addressable market in Jordan.
- Grow our in-house tech team
Q4) What do you believe are the biggest challenges while scaling, specifically within MENA?
Understanding the various cultural nuances between markets in MENA and tailoring the product and content as best as we can to fit the specific needs of each.
Q5) What are some of the most exciting things happening in the Ed-Tech space (globally) right now, in your opinion?
- Byju’s incredible success.
- The concept of online learning is growing in popularity and is being adopted more and more.
- Emergence of personalised learning through AI.
Q6) You've got an exciting line-up of both institutional, strategic, and individual investors of this round. What were you looking for from your investors, beyond capital?
We have a diverse group of investors in terms of geography. They all bring unique insight into the different markets we are targeting.
Several current and former executives from Uber and Netflix have invested with us and they’ve all experienced company hypergrowth firsthand which is an invaluable insight for us to have.
Q7) With COVID-19 uncertainty and ambiguity leading to social distancing, Ed-Tech platforms can expect to see a surge in usage as schools and universities move their instruction online. Do you expect this surge to be an outlier, or something that we can expect to see grow consistently beyond COVID-19?
We are entering a new era for edtech. I think the current circumstances, while unfortunate, will definitely open people’s eyes to the power and reach of online learning so I expect it will continue to grow in popularity.
Q8) Finally, what advice would you give yourself 5 years ago?
When launching your product, timing is everything.
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