UK edtech company Zzish, backed by UK and Chinese funds Leaf Investments and Chengdu Wide Horizon has hit its £300,000 crowdfunding target on Crowdcube.

The education company, founded by former Google product manager Charles Wiles, has raised £544,000 as it aims to fuel its global expansion plans to China and other countries.

The firn, which has now raised £3.5 million since its launch in 2014 has also received backing in previous rounds from angel investor Neil Hutchison, founder of the Forward Internet Group.

What is Zzish?

Zzish is an education app platform that gives teachers and parents insight into each child’s learning gaps, and then finds solutions to help each child progress. For example, after an online Geography test has been completed by students, the app will inform the teacher what students need help and what students need assistance in real time. This is designed to save teachers time on preparing lessons. Teachers can also pre-assign tailored follow-up exercises once students have completed an interactive game or assessment that measures their knowledge on a topic.

Zzish is also a platform which allows developers to create and distribute apps.

The company currently work with 145,000 teachers and 2 million students in 170 countries. The service costs $2 per student, each year.

In 2017, investments made globally to edtech companies reached over $9.52 billion, up 30 per cent on 2016,

Zzish founder and CEO, Charles Wiles, commented, ‘The market opportunity for edtech is vast, and its potential is not yet even fully realised. If you can imagine just how impactful it would be if you took the same kind of technology that is powering advertising and used it to power education, then we could start seeing positive solutions to some of the longest-standing problems that have beleaguered classrooms for years.’

Further reading on edtech

Gecko Labs secures £1m from the likes of New Look’s Tom Singh and Andrew Weisz

Show My Homework raises £2.4m to break into new learning products

‘Edtech’ business Firefly Learning raises £4.5m

Asia will drive edtech growth

According to a recent report, opportunities for edtech firms lie in Asian territories, like China, where the average Chinese household has increased its education spend by 50 per cent over the last three years.

The firm is currently running pilot programmes with the Ministry of Education in the Philippines, agreeing terms for a deal to be worth between $6 million -$10 million.

Alan Maguire, partner at Leaf Investments, commented, ‘We’re looking for two things in our investments: one is learning outcomes and efficacy, and the other is technology that brings real efficiency to the education environment, and that’s what a lot of edtech companies miss. Zzish brings in a perfect combination of the two.’