We’ve observed rapid digitisation of services ever since the coronavirus pandemic commenced. Alongside work, education is one of the sectors that was deeply impacted. However, thanks to digitisation, students can attend online classes from the safety of their homes. There’s no doubt that the new solutions pose some novel challenges but as per a new report by Dealroom, the edtech sector is offering notable solutions with the UK leading the sector in Europe.
London bags 3rd spot in the global EdTech top 10 list
It comes as a surprise that London is the only European tech hub that bagged a spot on Dealroom’s EdTech top 10 list. But it is due to the fact that Europe’s only EdTech unicorn, Learning Technology Group, is London based. Furthermore, London ranks third in the list in terms of deal count, after San Francisco and New York. The city has also attracted over €635.8M in investment, which is 70% of all UK EdTech investment since 2014, the report states.
With EdTech, as a sector, showing unprecedented global growth, it is expected to surpass last year’s global investment of €6.6B in 2020, by more than 15%. Additionally, as a growing sector, London’s EdTech ecosystem is reported to be the largest in Europe with an estimated value of €2.88B. Investments in the UK EdTech scene increased by a notable 4.4x since 2014 and in 2019, the UK received 39% of all European EdTech investment.
UK leading European EdTech scene
The aforementioned numbers clearly indicate that the EdTech sector in Europe is clearly on the rise, with the UK leading the way. However, there are other European Edtech ecosystems such as France, Germany and Ireland, which are close behind and are growing remarkably well. In terms of VC investments in the EdTech space, the UK bagged €309.5M last year while France, Germany, and Ireland raised €103.5M, €63.6M, and €34.8M respectively.
London-based EdTech startups are raising more rounds than other European EdTech startups, the report claims. This year, there have been 15 financing rounds in EdTech startups based out of London, whereas, only 10 startups from Paris, 6 from Berlin and one from Dublin raised funds YTD. London is also stated to have a high growth potential since it is the home to some world-renowned universities and hundreds of VC-backed EdTech startups.
The list of top-funded London EdTech startups features FutureLearn in the top spot with €87.3M in disclosed funding, It is followed by Graduway and Kano Computing, which raised €62.7M and €39M in total funding, respectively. As for the people investing in EdTech startups, currently, most of them are European investors. This year till now, a total of €197M has been invested in European edtech startups. Nearly €143M of the total investment was poured in by European investors, whereas, North American VCs contributed a meagre €27M.
Cover image credits: FamVeld/Shutterstock
