Rakuten leads $8m series-A for Inventure-backed Lingvist

Existing backers Inventure and Estonian VC SmartCap also participated in the round alongside Rakuten and two business angels – one of whom is Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn.

The investment will fund Lingvist's foray into Japan, including the development of a Japanese-English language learning option.

Lingvist is Rakuten's second investment in Estonia this year, with the company having acquired virtual fitting room startup Fits.me in July.

Previous funding
In April 2014, Lingvist raised €1m in seed funding from Techstars, SmartCap and Inventure. The initial capital was complemented by a further €1.6m raised from the EU's Horizon 2020 programme.

Company
Founded in 2013, Lingvist is a language learning service that uses data analysis and mathematical optimisation to improve the learning curve of its users and increase their learning speed.

The startup claims its offering can reduce the time it takes to learn a language to 200 hours. Headquartered in Tallinn, the Estonian business employs a staff of five.

People
Ott Jalakas is the co-founder of Lingvist. Hiroshi Mikitani is the CEO of Rakuten.

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• Topics
• CEE
• Expansion
• Consumer
• Estonia
• Inventure