Newsela a SaaS platform for K-12 instructional material supported by the likes of Kleiner Perkins, Owl Ventures, Reach Capital, and TCV, declared today that it has acquired $100 million in a Series D round. The financing was driven by new investor Franklin Templeton and moves Newsela’s valuation to $1 billion. The new round is bigger than the total of Newsela’s prior capital raised to date.
Matthew Gross, Newsela CEO told TechCrunch “Hitting $1 billion [in valuation] doesn’t modify a thing,” Yet, the startup is joining CourseHero, ApplyBoard, and Quizlet as organizations within the sector that have hit the unicorn mark as remote education keeps on acquiring a foothold.
Newsela has developed a site that unites much third-party content, for example, primary source documents or the latest National Geographic articles. Gross, the CEO of Newsela defines it as “material that isn’t purpose-built for education, [but] purpose-built for being interesting and informative.” If Newsela is tackling its work right, the content can replace textbooks within a classroom altogether, at the same time assisting educators to deliver fresh, customized material.
For instructors, the paid subscriptions offer the platform’s most helpful alternatives, including a dashboard to assess students’ tasks and view both individual and class results, tracking progress toward meeting the related Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. Newsela changed its pricing structure beginning in the 2019-2020 academic session, making a subscription-based service to be free. In case you’re not a paid subscriber, you’ll find less content accessible than there was previously. The best highlights (including reporting tools and vocabulary practice activities) are accessible to subscribers only.
“Textbooks are dead in classrooms, but are well-and-live in locale buying,” Gross said. The startup is determined to disseminate its product better, and the fund will be utilized to get it into more classrooms. Part of this, Gross clarifies, is to inform instructors what else it can give along with the reading material. Analytics has become a major piece of Newsela’s business, as distant learning hurts the commitment of students.
The startup’s paid product is between $6 to $14 per student, which contrasts with reading material that costs between $20 to $40 per student “even on an annual basis.”
Like other edtech organizations, Newsela offered its item free of charge toward the start of the pandemic, which gave it a solid knock of new users.
Newsela estimates that over the pandemic, its gross bookings grew by 115%, and revenue became 81%. It declined to share revenue numbers or if it has hit profitability. Gross said that there will be over 11 million students utilizing Newsela licensing before the end of 2021.
Newsela stated that 66% of government-funded schools in the United States are utilizing their platform likely helped by the flexibility of school districts that have developed during the pandemic.
