uLesson began by distributing pre-recorded K-12 video lessons via SD cards and dongles and has expanded into a streaming app with quizzes, homework help connecting students to tutors, one-to-many live classes and one-to-one tutoring experiments. The platform records strong engagement: students spend an average of 57 minutes on the app, the app has 2 million downloads, 12.3 million videos watched and 25.6 million questions answered. Paying users grew 600% year-over-year, monthly average users rose 700% and average daily users surged 430%; live-lesson demand has grown 222% since its September launch. Nigeria is the core market (≈85% of paying users), though the company markets actively in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Ghana and has users in several other countries via word of mouth. uLesson sells monthly subscriptions (₦7,500 ≈ $18) and a two-year device+plan bundle (₦137,000 ≈ $334) and uses 180 field sales agents; roughly 50% of learners access lessons on parents’ phones. The company has rolled out offline centers for awareness and sign-ups and plans to integrate its DevKids coding offering into the main platform and broaden content into social sciences, financial accounting and additional primary-level reasoning topics. uLesson distributes curriculum using SD cards as a low-bandwidth delivery method and through a mobile app, positioning itself as a supplementary education tool. The service charges an annual fee of $50 and the app has been downloaded more than 1 million times. The company reported 70% month-over-month growth as the coronavirus pandemic accelerated device adoption across homes in Africa. uLesson is experimenting with live tutoring features and tested a question-asking feature during pre-recorded lessons that generated more than 3,000 questions per day before the test was paused due to demand. The founder said the company aims to go online entirely by Q2 this year and evolve from an offline, asynchronous product to a live, online platform. uLesson is conducting a study with the University of Georgia to track mastery and outcomes. uLesson, founded in 2019 by Sim Shagaya and headquartered in Lagos with a production studio in Jos, builds an app-based home education kit for secondary-school students. Its product pack includes a dongle, SD card, and headphones to connect to Android devices, combining streaming with offline SD-card delivery to minimize data costs. The curriculum covers math, physics, chemistry, and biology and the team has produced about 3,000 animated videos plus practice tests and tailored assessments. The service is sold as an up-front yearly subscription around $70 with a pay-as-you-go option and incorporates a network of counselors to guide usage and lesson plans. uLesson positions itself as a supplement to secondary education and a more affordable alternative to private tutors, targeting Anglophone West Africa (an addressable market the founder estimated at ~300 million people). The company planned a February 2020 go-to-market in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Gambia and intends to adapt the product for East Africa after regional rollout. The startup raised a $3.1M seed round and is led by founder Sim Shagaya, who has reinvested some proceeds from prior exits into the business.

Total raised

$26M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Dec 2021