The AOne team
Malaysian edutech company AOne announced today it has secured RM2 million (US$500,000) in a seed funding round, led by regional VC Wavemaker Partners.
This comes barley seven months after the startup received a funding from ScaleUp Ventures Malaysia and a MYR300,000 (~US$75,000) grant from Cradle Fund.
Founded in 2015 by Dr. Darren Gouk, AOne is an edutech solution that brings together a B2C marketplace and B2B backend management software for all kinds of local enrichment lessons across Southeast Asia.
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Its key product, AOneSchools, helps enrichment centres like tuition schools, kindergartens and enrichment academies to manage their administrative workflow.
On top of it, AOne also provides a B2C online marketplace for local classes that connects students with education providers near them.
The venture was originally designed as an online marketplace for local classes. As its client base expanded, it learned about the struggles of education centre owners with managing their operational workflow. Determined to help them, the team developed and launched AOneSchools, a management software that facilitates student enrolment, class scheduling and fee tracking for educators, in 2018.
Currently, AOne serves 800-plus enrichment centres, managing over 50,000 lessons and more than 100,000 learners and educators across multiple cities, with the majority of them located in Malaysia and Singapore.
At present, it serves educators in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Macau.
In the next 12 to15 months, the company plans to use the funds to drive market expansion across Southeast Asia, as well as enhance its current product offerings in education sector.
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AOne’s vision is to create a super-app in education, starting from a B2C lesson marketplace, a B2B backend management system, and an automated payment solution for educators all across Southeast Asia.
“Darren, who has the experience in running three mathematics centres, has built AOne with a firm understanding of what education centres, parents and their children need,” said Gavin Lee, General Partner of Wavemaker.
“This is powerfully reflected in the fact that AOne is a dual-sided solution that not only reduces manual work in education centres, but also allows parents themselves to manage their children’s schedules and payments. They’ve grown despite the pandemic and have happy clients in Singapore such as The Collective Knowledge, Frankel Tutors, My Chinese Steps etc.”
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Since 2012, Wavemaker has backed 136 firms, of which 116 are in enterprise and deep-tech. Its portfolio includes startups in software, AI and cybersecurity as well as precision agriculture, cleantech, additive manufacturing and laser communications.
In June this year, Wavemaker hit the final close of its third Southeast Asia fund at US$111 million, exceeding its initial target of US$100 million.
It also has some exits to its name, including Indonesian mobile point-of-sale system Moka (acquired by Gojek), cloud communications software company Wavecell (acquired by 8×8) and regional payments solutions provider Red Dot Payment (acquired by PayU/Naspers).
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Image Credit: AOne
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