Time to talk? Edutech Blabla startup, Y Combinator graduate, raises $1.54 million

The multiple and constant growth of the TikTok user audience and the general trend in the development of the Edutainment sphere give birth to promising projects. The same decision was made by investment analysts from Amino Capital, Starling Ventures and Wayra X. They invested $1.54 million in a startup graduate of Y Combinator (which is also among the investors) — the Blabla project. Since it’s appeared in 2019, the project has raised a total of $3.1 million, according to crunchbase.

Blabla is an app where native English speakers record short, entertaining videos designed to teach the language to students from all over the world. Internal functionality allows you to add subtitles and helps creators in building scenes and communicating with the audience. Users, in turn, pay to access a personalized recommendation feed based on their language level and can train their skills right in the app.

Several factors contributed to the success of the project, one of which is the coronavirus, which has locked a large number of people at homes and has increased the general interest in EduTech. The second factor is the available subscription terms. Now almost 90% of the audience of the project is of Chinese origin. The specificity of the Chinese market of English language learning is the hegemony of large and recognized players, within the learning system of which the user spends much larger amounts than Blabla requires. The third factor is the popularity of TikTok formats: short, dynamic and entertaining videos appeal to Gen Z more than classic lessons with teachers via video link.

Today a startup has over 11,000 users weekly and 300–400 paying users. Blabla plans to expand to the markets of Southeast Asia and Latin America, collaborate with brands (among which, in fact, TikTok and YouTube), as well as attract teachers of other foreign languages.

More information.