Hoxton leads $10m series-A for learning platform Preply

The round also saw participation from Point Nine Capital, All Iron Ventures, The Family, EduCapital, Diligent Capital and a number of angel investors, including Arthur Kosten of Booking.com; Gary Swart, former CEO of Upwork; David Helgason, founder of Unity technologies; and Daniel Hoffer, founder of Couchsurfing.

Hoxton deployed capital from its second fund, which held a first close on $74.1m in February 2020. The venture fund targets $100m and has a $120m hard-cap. It invests up to $5m in European tech companies.

Preply intends to use the fresh financing to further expand in North America, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK, develop new features and tools, and improve its mobile app offering.

Previous funding
Following an initial investment from Vostok Ventures and angel investors Semyon Dukach, Borya Shakhnovich and Vadim Yasinovsky, Preply raised $118,000 from Techstars in 2015.

Subsequently, the startup received $1.3m from Hedgehog Fund and other investors in 2016.

More recently, Berlin-based VC house Point Nine Capital led a $4m funding round for the business in July 2018. Additional investors in the round included RTAventures VC, Diligent Capital Partners and Ukraine-based SMRK.

Company
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Kiev, Preply is an online learning platform that connects students with private language tutors remotely via online chat. It allows users to learn 50 different languages with the help of a tutor able to track their progress.

The company claims to have tens of thousands of users in 190 countries worldwide. It offers a network of 10,000 tutors available online and employs 125 staff in its offices in Kiev, Barcelona and Berlin.

People
Preply – Kirill Bigai (co-founder, CEO).
Hoxton Ventures – Rob Kniaz (partner).

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• Topics
• Expansion
• CEE
• Technology
• Venture
• Point Nine Capital
• Ukraine