As Latin America attracts record-breaking venture capital totals, education technology (edtech) startups in the region are given new opportunities to grow. The back-to-back raises are a reminder that edtech’s relevance in Latin America isn’t just growing in classrooms, but also within organizations across Latin America. It’s a sign that both consumers and employers believe in the importance of reskilling in today’s new, ever-changing future of work. Y Combinator surely doesn't want to miss out on edtech. Here's a list of the Top Y Combinator Edtech startups based in Latin America:
Platzi
Platzi is an online education platform that teaches courses on design, marketing and programming with a 70% completion rate, to over one million students worldwide. The classes include real-time collaboration among students and industry leaders as teachers. It aims to be the professional home for lifelong learning of advanced skills.
The startup was founded by Freddy Vega and Christian Van Der Henst in 2014, and has since raised a total of USD $78.4M from Foundation Capital, 500 Global, FJ Labs, Y Combinator and Funders Club, among others.
Coderhouse
Coderhouse offers live online courses in programming, design, data, online marketing and more. Their courses are nearly as affordable as online Moocs (~$40 a month) and as effective as Bootcamps. To achieve this they run 100 person live classes with one expert professor and one mentor per 15 students. In every class, students need to turn in assignments that are corrected by their mentors and at the end of the course they need to turn in and approve a final project.
Coderhouse also helps selected students with careers services such as mockup interviews, Linkedin enhancement, and more. All of this creates a level of accountability that results in really low churn levels (<9%). Their career tracks last between 9-11 months and give their selected students their money back in case they don't get a job 6 months after they are done with the course.
The startup was founded by Christian Patiño and Nahuel Lema in 2019 and has since raised a total of USD $14M from Reach Capital, Y Combinator and Monashees, among others.
Henry
Henry is an online data science school that trains software developers & data scientists for free and help them find a job remotely in exchange of a share of their future income. The company claims that there’s an estimated 1 million software engineering job openings in Latin America, but fewer than 100,000 professionals that have training suitable for those roles.
The startup was founded by Martin Borchardt, Manuel Barna Ferrés, Luz Borchardt, and Leonardo Maglia in 2019 and has since raised a total of USD $11.8M from Y Combinator Norte Ventures, DILA Capital, Noveus Capital and Kayyak Ventures, among others.
Awari
Awari is replacing masters degrees in Brazil with cohort-based courses for top talent to advance their careers in tech. The programs incorporate hands-on learning with sessions led by experts from high-profile companies like Rappi, Nubank, Apple, Google, and more.
The startup founded by Fabio Muniz in 2018 has raised a total of USD $1.2M from Y Combinator, Weekend Fund, and angels Ben Hamner, Mathur Shashank, and Mike Mahlkow, among others.
Poliglota
Founded by Carlos Aravena, Nicolas Fuenzalida, and Jose Sanchez in 2012, Poliglota is the online language school for Latin America, where group classes are led by an instructor. Over 12,000 students have paid USD $500 to learn english in order to get a higher income. They offer an online service of personalized language sessions with small groups of people of the same level, guided by expert language coaches that they train through their social methodology.
Filadd
Founded by Joaquin Olmedo, Agustin Trombotto, Nicolás Ferrer, and Guillermo Bruchmann, Filadd is an EdTech startups that offers online courses to help students graduate from University, starting from the admissions and throughout their entire college education until they graduate. All their courses include 24/7 interaction with their Tutors and Teachers making 95% of our users reach their desire score. They have prepared more than 10,000 students and in 2021 they have already made 800K which means 6X Year-over-Year growth.
Kurios
Founded by Carlos Lau and Luis Ubillas Door in 2o19, Kurios offers cohort based online courses for professionals in Latin America. Their instructors are professionals coming out of tech companies like Google, Amazon, Stripe and more. Their course completion rate is 90% and annual customer retention rate is 100%. The startup has over 65 B2B customers and they up-skill their employees in product management, growth and data analytics, just to start with. Some of their customers include Walmart Mexico, Banorte (2nd bank in Mexico), Mercado Libre, BCP (#1 bank in Peru), Alicorp (leading CPG in Latam), Sura (leading pension fund), amongst others.
Kiwify
Founded by Artur Ribas and Marinho Gomes in 2020, Kiwify is an edtech startup that enables anyone to create and sell their online course in Brazil. They provide payment processing, video streaming and student management tools.
