CBA leads investment in CLANED a Finnish EdTech venture
Cross Border Angels & Investors (CBA), an international investor network specialised in facilitating international deals, has led a EUR 1.3 Million round in CLANED a Finnish education technology venture. The round was led by Indian CBA members.
CLANED, a Tekes (Finland Government’s Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation) funded company is headquartered in Helsinki and has raised a total of EUR 4.0 Million in seed capital since its incorporation in 2013.
Finland is known world wide for its high level of education and the roots of CLANED lie deep in the Finnish pedagogical expertise. CLANED is a personal learning environment that offers students of all age groups the tools they need for motivating and successful learning. This is achieved by combining academically validated learning theories and artificial intelligence to understand how each individual student learns optimally. This unique and comprehensive insight that shows student’s study performance as well as learning orientation and characteristics including motivation, emotion and stress levels is returned to students in form of alternative or additional learning content, study buddy or mentor recommendations. Teachers get the necessary tools to intervene before failure or dropouts occur, as well as assistance in recognising students needing support or lacking challenge.
With regards to the funding round, Vesa Peralla, Founder, Claned shared “It was great working with Cross Border Angels on this round as we got access to Smart capital through their network, which is critical for us at this stage. These international investors will help us to leverage on their network, thus helping our venture roll out in the Indian subcontinent, one of the key focus geographies for Claned in 2016.”
CLANED has closed commercial deals with multiple customers in Finland, UK, Spain, Singapore, India, UAE, USA, Vietnam and Indonesia during its first 5 commercial months. CLANED works closely with international partners such as Microsoft and Lenovo to deliver personalised learning to all students even outside of formal education systems. South East Asia and especially India is seen as the most important expansion region for CLANED and the company will be setting up offices in the region in 2016.
Speaking on why CBA chose to invest in Claned, Mandar Gadkari, Director at CBA India, shared, “Claned is the next generation of cognitive learning platforms. The team is ex Nokia and highly equipped to understand technological nuances. The traction achieved by Claned coupled with the fact that the platform has a definite adoption potential in emerging markets like India encouraged CBA members to invest in the company.”
CLANED was also the 1st Runner up in Startup India Rocks, an international startup conference held in Goa, organised by the Scaale Group, CBA’s parent company. The raised capital will be used for scaling up commercial operations as well as speeding up the introduction of new product features. In order to optimise its growth, CLANED is looking to raise a Series A in Q2 2016 to fuel global growth ambitions.
Almost $2 Million have been invested post the Startup India Rocks conference organised by Scaale Group last year. On the back of this successful launch, the Scaale Group intends to reach out to entrepreneurs in over 40 cities globally (including 20 in India, starting May 2016) to spot interesting & give them an opportunity to present at the Grand Finale in October in Goa. The intention is to evangelise the Indian & international venture community & encourage collaboration among them. For more information on Startup India Rocks, please click on http://startupindia.rocks/
Source: Your Story