KA’CHING: US edtech raised $51.5 million in March 2016, according to analysis by EdSurge. The funding was spread across 14 different deals; at least 34 unique investors participated.
Parchment lead the way in March with its $12M in funding. Parchment helps students store, access and share digital transcripts with schools and other organizations. The tool also allows schools and employers to evaluate applicants' credentials relative to one another. The company reports that the platform exchanged over 12 million credentials and is used by 6,500 high schools and 3,300 higher education institutions.
Other big winners in March included $11,000,000 in Series B money to LightSail Education. LightSail helps students to build literacy skills as they read from a library of 80,000 fiction and non-fiction titles, each embedded with questions that match the student’s reading level. Teachers can track how students are performing on these assessments. Boston, MA-based LTG Exam Platform, developer of mobile test prep apps, has raised $5,300,000 in a Series A round. The funding will help the company further build out its mobile apps, which cover exams like the SAT, GMAT and GRE, and add more senior management staff. The company also recently rolled out a college recommendation service. Founded in 2012, LTG Exam Platform’s apps have been downloaded by half a million students around the world.
The $51.5 million in March edtech investments brings the total for the first quarter of 2016 to $215M, a sharp drop from $585M in Q4 2015. Our team researched this drop in funding, and asked whether the industry should be panicking.
Interested in learning more about these and other US and ex-US edtech deals? Subscribe today to our monthly Ka’Ching reports, and stay tuned for more edtech funding info in our weekly newsletters.
