Singaporean edtech startup Geniebook raises $16.6 million in Series A funding round

John Danner (Dunce Capital), Gaurav Munjal and Roman Saini (Unacademy), Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal (Snapdeal), Alvin Tse (Xiaomi), and Linh Pham Giang (Hocmai) were among the private individuals who invested in this round, as well as senior executives from some of Southeast Asia’s most influential companies like Grab, Shopee, and Gojek.

This latest round of funding comes after their previous Pre-Series A round which raised $1.1 million in 2019 by a private investment company, Apricot Capital.

Founded in 2017 by experienced educators Neo Zhizhong and Alicia Cheong, Geniebook is a powerful suite of online learning products designed to help students accelerate their academic performance through personalisation.

Incredibly intuitive, Geniebook offers multiple ways to compound a student’s learning gains through self-directed and social learning across its products, ranging from worksheets, live online classes, and teacher chats. Students benefit from this blended learning experience targeted to their needs, more so than from any single product offer.

Neo Zhizhong and Alicia Cheong, Geniebook's co-founders

Since the start of 2019, Geniebook has achieved impressive revenue growth of over 2,000 per cent with a fast-growing user base of over 150,000 in Southeast Asia.

In Vietnam alone, its revenue has tripled versus 2020. The profitable Singapore-headquartered company continues to fly the flag for Singapore education regionally with offices now located in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

“More than ever today, with online pedagogy becoming essential, we must greatly enhance the digital experience to accelerate students’ learning. We are thrilled to work with our new partners to elevate our suite of learning products and expand the team strategically in the region,” says Neo Zhizhong, CEO and co-founder of Geniebook.

“As we enter the second year of the pandemic, when schools and students have to seek online arrangements, edtech companies are playing an important role and have accelerated their delivery of solutions to users,” said Roderick Purwana, managing partner at East Ventures. “Geniebook, with their differentiated product offerings, is one of the leading edtech players in Singapore and has shown strong traction in overseas markets like Vietnam. We are excited to join them in their journey to develop their core key strategies and expand to other countries in the region.”

“We are excited to back Neo Zhizhong and Alicia Cheong who have been tutoring for the past 10 years and who have built a successful offline tutoring business prior to Geniebook,” said Dev Khare, partner at Lightspeed. "The Southeast Asia region has several countries with exam-driven cultures where Geniebook's worksheets and cohort-based live learning approach delivers a premium experience with measurable improvement in student outcomes.”

Since 2019, Geniebook has expanded its team by five times and today houses over 350 employees globally. This has largely been driven by recruitment in curriculum (teaching specialists, content experts) and engineering (data scientists, tech developers) to maximise edtech’s best opportunities.

The startup will utilise the funds from this round to upscale the team with strategic new hires across linchpin roles in the curriculum, engineering, product, growth teams, and more.

Buoyed by this funding round and the support of its strategic partners, Geniebook is poised for a next growth leap with strategic new hires, product innovation, plus an unwavering focus to deliver learning experiences to help more students learn smarter and do better.