Kidato, a Kenyan e-learning platform, has announced that it has closed a seed round of $1.4 million post-Y-Combinator Demo Day. This new investment will aid the company in expanding its growth and development in education across Africa

Among the new investors for Kidato are Learn Start Capital, Launch Africa Ventures Fund, Graph ventures, Century Oak Capital, an Ivy League university endowment fund as well as other notable local and global angel investors including some of Kidato’s students’ parents.

Launched in 2020 by Sam Gichuru, a Kenyan serial entrepreneur, Kidato is built around the idea that learning is a lifetime experience, therefore it should not be boring but fun and rewarding, the same way it is to watch videos on Youtube or play Minecraft and Roblox.

Having understood how those fun platforms work, Kidato now redefines learning for kids by incorporating built-in behaviour reward mechanisms such as lesson merits into its teaching methods to offer learners interesting and enjoyable virtual classes.

Some of the pain points plaguing Africa’s educational system range from overcrowded public schools, expensive tuition fees in private schools, distance, poorly motivated teachers to a noticeable absence of personalized attention for learners.

As such, the eight-month-old edtech startup aims to solve these challenges by building an online K-12 school in Africa that ensures better learning outcomes in smaller personalized class sizes comprising an average of 1:5 teacher-student ratio, complemented by highly trained and well-motivated tutors, and a comprehensive extracurricular program for socialization.