FoondaMate, a South African edtech startup, announced that it has launched in Nigeria.
Founded in 2020 by Dacod Magagula and Tao Laine Boyle, Foondmate supports students with their revision exercises by providing prompt answers to questions and access to revision papers, while also guiding them in responses to questions.
The edtech startup recently raised $2 million in a seed funding round led by LocalGlobe boost to accelerate the global adoption of its Whatsapp and Facebook-based learning chatbot.
FoondaMate targets high-school students in emerging markets where Whatsapp is widely used and is a lot cheaper or free to access. It claims to have helped 500,000+ students in over 30 countries to do their homework, study, and learn new things.
Since its launch in Nigeria, it has already registered over 4,000 users on the Whatsapp platform. FoondaMate currently has past questions for the West African Senior School Certificate Examinations, but says it would have more exams in the very near future.
In a Techcabal discussion with Tao Laine Boyle, she said “Nigeria is a huge and young market, so there is great potential for helping people move from where they are to that next step, whatever that next step is for them. Being able to help somebody get to that next step is something that we really care about and something that we are excitedly looking forward to doing in the country.”
She expressed satisfaction about the feedback they have been getting from the Nigerian community after the launch. She said , “Nigerian students don’t hold back. They tell you exactly what they think as soon as they see it. At first, we thought it would be difficult to get feedback, but it’s been completely the opposite. Students sign up and on the same day they email us telling us how much they love the product and recommending other things they would like to see on the platform.”
The company expects that the feedback from the Nigerian community will help it improve its offering in Nigeria.
