Flying Cape, an online booking and advisory platform for tuition and enrichment classes has raised $1.5 million in Series A funding from venture capital firm Start-up O and accelerator EduSpaze, as well as angel investors.
The capital raised will be used to scale Flying Cape’s operations in China and throughout Southeast Asia over the next two years, the company said in a statement.
Singapore based education technology startup provides children of all ages and adults with an online tutor discovery platform for various courses like academics, arts, music, etc. It also conducts various online workshops for children to participate and learn. Students can find and book tutors directly from the platform.
Flying Cape was founded in 2015 to assist parents in understanding their children’s learning styles, hobbies, and passions. It also assists families in locating appropriate classes for their children by providing customised recommendations based on the results of its own SMART diagnostic evaluation tools.
The platform claims that its traffic and transaction volumes have increased by more than 400% in the last year as the epidemic has changed the educational environment.
Founder and CEO of Flying Cape, Jamie Tan has said,
“COVID-19 has dramatically transformed the education landscape. Local education players have emerged with more innovative digitised content and engaged learning concepts to better prepare learners for the future.”
Flying Cape’s solution and ecosystem have been able to help its partner achieve over 30% reduction in operating costs. Currently, the company has almost 1,000 education partners in Singapore and overseas.
Commenting on the development, Lydia Ang, Head of Business Development at Flying Cape said,
“To give learners more options for finding just the right fit for their learning, we are also working closely with overseas education providers to offer a larger variety of enrichment options — such as Chinese Language and Art educators from China and music instructors from London.”
The growth comes as China imposes an unprecedented ban on tutoring organisations that make money by teaching essential topics after school, as well as prohibiting companies that run edtech platforms from obtaining financing through initial public offerings.
In September, the company will launch the Flying Cape Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) curriculum in China. Through the creation of interactive learning modalities supported by multilingual teachers, it provides students with the essential abilities required for higher education.