Fidu wants to build a new operating system for LatAm schools, so that institutions can digitally manage everything from finances to schoolwide announcements.
Founded by Nicolas Giménez, Caterina Carreño and Ariel Manduca, recently announced that it had raised USD $5M from Lightspeed Venture Partners, NFX, Imaginable Futures and Broom Ventures. It also landed money from regional founders including Rappi’s Felipe Villamarin and Andres Bilbao, Auth0’s Matias Woloski, Despegar’s Roby Souviron and Frubana’s Fabian Gomez.
Most Latin American schools work with paper, WhatsApp groups and e-mail. "The huge challenge here was how do we create this operating system that is super simple to use for schools to just get online and start solving main administrative tasks. It’s a very Latin American solution, and it’s very different from how things work in the states,” the co-founder added. Fidu also built a custom app for schools to communicate with families, cementing its approach to being a full-stack option.
School administrators can use Fidu’s app to send tuition and pay slips to parents, and then tuition is paid by the recipients via phone. The startup is also building technology that lets it better “know the customers of the school,” so that it’s easier to understand how stable the school’s revenue is. Once it has a better understanding of that data, it seeks to offer guaranteed revenue financing to schools. Fidu’s revenue-financing products are currently being piloted in Mexico City and Bogota.
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