AllRight, an English language learning app for children, raises $5M from Genesis Investments

AllRight is a platform for English language learning, aimed at children four years or older, which combines lessons with real teachers and homework with “AI-powered” tutors. It’s now raised a $5 million Series A round led by Genesis Investments, with participation from TMT Investments, TerraVC and existing investors Flashpoint and Misha Lyalin.

The Ukraine-based startup will now enter new markets and strengthen its positions in Poland, Russia, Spain and Latin America. AllRight’s competitors include Open English, LingoKids (which has raised $22 million), MyBuddy, Preply ($15 million) and NovaKid ($2.3 million).

There are approximately 1.5 billion English language learners globally and the number of children among them reached 500 million in 2020. The global English language learning market is projected to reach $55 billion by 2025, growing at 7% annually, according to reports.

So the company targets markets with low online education penetration rates, such as emerging markets. Since its launch in 2017, AllRight has launched Spanish-English, Polish-English and Russian-English language pairs and garnered 9,000 students, who take 50,000 lessons per month.

The learning process is powered by a real-time collaboration platform for teachers and students, doing live lessons online with lessons “quality controlled by AI” and an “AI-powered tutor” with a voice-only interface with speech recognition and synthesis. This allows children to practice spoken English with AI. The app has obviously benefited from the fact that many lessons in schools are now conducted virtually due to the pandemic.

AllRight was founded by Oleg Oksyuk, and the team is comprised of people drawn from 51Talks, SkyEng, Cisco and Yandex. He said: “Our pilot language pair launch three years ago showed that learning a language with gamification in early childhood produces excellent results. That is why in March 2019 we directed our efforts to further delivery of an affordable edutainment program and launched Spanish-English and Polish-English language pairs.”

Vitaly Laptenok, general partner of Genesis Investments, said: “This is the biggest deal of Genesis Investments by date…The platform currently demonstrates 3x year-over-year growth and the team supports these dynamics by entering new markets and scaling there.”

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