Nigerian startup Edusko has developed an education marketplace that matches families with K-12 private schools and supports them with low-interest funding to provide their children with quality education regardless of their economic status.
Founded by Jide Ayegbusi and Bukola Owobello in 2016 as a school listing platform, Edusko pivoted into a full-fledged education marketplace in 2020. For parents, it helps connect their children with quality schools and access to funding, while for Nigeria’s private schools it helps them increase their enrollments with little or no marketing budget.
“For example, schools recruit more than 70 per cent of their students with less than 10 per cent of their marketing budget on our platform. Parents get as much as a 40 per cent school fee discount, and can access low-interest education loans and stationery with ease,” said Ayegbusi.
“Over one billion children will be born over the next three decades in Sub-Saharan Africa. Demand for education will continue to soar and so will the proliferation of bad schools, while the good ones will be unaffordable for the middle-class. We founded Edusko to bridge this gap.”
So far, the startup has listed about 4,500 K-12 private schools, and more than 50,000 parents have used the platform to place their wards in suitable schools to date.
“We have users across 36 states in Nigeria,” Ayegbusi said. “We are slowing down on listing at the moment and focused on activation and conversion to grow our revenue significantly.”
That revenue comes from subscriptions for paid listing by schools, a share on loan interest from affiliated lenders, and commissions on students referred to the schools by the Edusko platform. The startup, which has so far taken in a little over US$150,000 in equity and grant funding, has pan-African ambitions.
“We are currently operating in Nigeria but keen on expansion into Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and Egypt in the next five years. We expect the market to grow significantly in the coming years as the middle class families, who are the main drivers of the market, continue to expand, and increasingly view their children as their most important asset. We are targeting 10 per cent of the market in eight years,” Ayegbusi said.
