T-Venture et al. back iversity

Since inception in 2011, iversity has raised more than €5m in venture capital.

The fresh funding will improve the usability of the platform, enable iversity to work with more universities and increase its userbase. It claims to be in talks with more than 100 universities that wish to make their courses available via the iversity platform.

The company recently opened another office in central Berlin and intends to make new hires. Its new director of marketing was formerly a Rocket Internet employee.

T-Venture is the venture arm of Deutsche Telekom. BFB has a €25m fund managed by bmp media. Of the fund, 75% is provided by the European Regional Development Fund, while Brandenburg State provides the remainder.

Previous funding
BFB and bmp first invested more than €1m into iversity in September 2011, in return for a 10.1% stake in the company. The management team at iversity approached bmp directly for investment. At this point, the iversity concept was as a learning management system for universities.

In January 2013, T-Venture led a growth capital financing round together with iversity's CEO, according to unquote" data. The funding was earmarked for the development of relationships between iversity and universities in Europe and North America.

Company
Founded in 2011, iversity launched its platform for massive open online courses in October 2013. It now has around 700,000 enrolments in 51 courses. It has partnerships with 30 education providers, who are mainly universities in Europe. These include the University of Padua, RWTH Aachen, the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and the European University Institute.

Courses on the platform are recognised within the European credit transfer system, meaning they can be studied as part of a degree programme at universities across Europe. The company is based in Bernau-bei-Berlin in Brandenburg and has 10 employees.

People
Hannes Klöpper is co-founder and managing director of iversity. Axel Nitsch is senior investment manager at T-Venture.

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