Hong Kong-headquartered education tech startup Snapask has bagged USD 35 million led by Asia Partners. The new capital brings Snapask’s total funding to USD 56.8 million since its establishment in 2015. The company will utilize its fresh capital to further strengthen its Southeast Asian presence by setting up its regional headquarters in Singapore and expanding its services into Vietnam this year.
Snapask matches students with tutors for interactive question and answer sessions. According to Snapask’s founder and CEO Timothy Yu, the company’s vision is help students develop the habit of asking questions and increase their interest in learning. “I was working as a private tutor after graduated from university. I created teaching materials and put them in videos so I wouldn’t have to repeat everything I said to different students,” Yu told KrASIA in an interview.
“After two months of consistently posting videos on Facebook, I attracted a good number of students from Hong Kong who came to my page to watch the videos. They asked questions in the comments section and messaged me directly so I realized that students need more than videos; they need personalized one-on-one learning experiences with teachers who can help them immediately,” he continued.
Through personalized and convenient tutor sessions, Snapask aims to usher in a new era of self-directed learning that is enabled by technology, Yu added.
Snapask currently serves over three million students in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, and South Korea. Targeting students aged between ten and 17, the firm claims that its user base has doubled in the last 12 months, and that it is seeing fast adoption in Southeast Asian markets.
The platform has four products. First is its core service, Snapask, where students can ask questions and match with 350,000 tutors from top universities for after school learning support. Second is Sofasoda, an online learning platform created for Millennials and Gen Zs that are already in or about to enter the job market.
The third is Lab, an after school study space that is currently only available in Hong Kong, Taipei, and Seoul. And the fourth is Wizmo, an analytic dashboard for teachers and parents to monitor students’ learning progress. This new round of investment will also be used to further develop and improve Wizmo’s capacity, according to Yu. “We will continue to invest in both products and content to meet students’ learning needs, focus on the promotion of self-directed learning and create environments in which students can compete and cooperate with peers,” he said.
The company is hoping to collaborate with schools and educational institutions across markets to help teachers and students design individualized learning approaches.
