South African ed-tech startup FoondaMate has launched operations in Nigeria on a bid to democratise learning and close education inequality gaps with its AI-powered study chatbot.
Founded by Dacod Magagula and Tao Boyle in August 2020, FoondaMate has built a chat-based, AI-powered learning bot that helps students get fast, easy and safe access to study materials and help via open chat platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
Its bot is used by over 900,000 students, speaking 11 languages across 30 countries, and in May the startup raised US$2 million in seed funding to help it expand. It has started doing so with the launch of a Nigeria-specific WhatsApp number, focusing on helping secondary school students do homework and prepare for WAEC. FoondaMate Nigeria has seen 5,000 organic sign-ups in its first month.
“At FoondaMate, we believe talent is equally distributed yet opportunities are not. There are often competing factors that contribute to educational inequality – not just in Africa, but across the world – and our technology is helping to universally address these. It’s humbling to think so many learners trust us to support their desire to learn and it’s a responsibility we take incredibly seriously,” said Magagula.
