2022年6月1日

電子學習——無論是對實物材料的補充還是現場教學;或者主要的，甚至是唯一的被使用的媒介——現在是教育經曆中不可磨滅的一部分;現在，一家來自西班牙的初創公司已經建立了一個平台，幫助在更多的地方提供電子學習，該公司宣布進行一輪增長融資，以進一步擴大業務。總部位於馬德裏的初創公司Odilo已經獲得6000萬歐元(6400萬美元)的投資，該公司建立了一個白標簽平台，供企業或組織以B2B2C模式構建自己的定製電子學習產品。倫敦投資機構Bregal Milestone領投本輪融資，之前的支持者Swanlaab和CDTI也參與了融資。Odilo沒有透露其估值，但該公司成立於2012年，此前融資不到3000萬美元。你可能不熟悉"奧迪羅"這個名字創始人兼首席執行官羅德裏戈·羅德裏格斯(Rodrigo Rodriguez)向我描述Odilo為教育界的“Netflix”，因為它擁有龐大的目錄——到目前為止，該公司已經積累了390萬項項目的目錄，包括大約300萬本書，還有播客、完整的課程和其他材料，來自43種語言的6300家出版商——而且人們可以根據需要使用任何你想要的內容。然而，與Netflix不同的是，它是作為一種標簽服務運營的，所以你可能永遠不會真正看到Odilo品牌。然而，您可能使用過它所支持的某個教育門戶網站。 Odilo has so far racked up 8,500 customers in 52 countries, covering some 170 million users in all, with the list including government bodies, libraries and education organizations like MIT, but also big corporate customers such as Google and Vodafone. Rodriguez said that the new funding will be used to continue growing that catalogue as well as to expand deeper into more markets, specifically North America and the African continent. The company has grown out of two significant trends in tech. The first is the rise of e-learning, which in its widest view — which can include both school learning as well as professional training and everything in between — was estimated to be worth some $315 billion in 2021 and will grow at a CAGR of 20% for the next six years according to researchers . That whole trend, of course, was accelerated by Covid-19, when schools and other in-person learning experiences were shut down, but it was already big even before the pandemic, and given the economics of virtual experiences is likely to remain in place. The second is the rise of “headless” systems: services that are built as extensible platforms, where customers are given the option of using a variety of APIs and other tools to build out their own customized experiences on top of them. These are very common in other areas of tech that are otherwise very complex to build from the ground up — e-commerce backends (Shopify or Commercetools for example), content management systems (eg Contentful) — and now Odilo is effectively using that same model and applying it to e-learning. (And to point out, there are others also pursuing the idea of building platforms that let others create customizable libraries of e-learning: Perlego in London has described itself as a “Spotify” of e-learning pursuing something similar and also raising money to build that out; the scale of Odilo is very impressive in that regard, though.) It was notable to me that Google is one of Odilo’s customers: the company, one of the world’s undisputed tech giants, has made a big push into education by way of products like its collaborative multi-media Google Classroom ; its Google Scholar academic material search; YouTube of course; its primary search engine and so much more. It uses Odilo to build training and education libraries for its people, Rogriduez told me, but had it ever approached Odilo to build a more consumer-facing offering? No, was the short answer he gave me, but he did note that it’s been talking with very large technology companies, which want to look at this kind of product but might not want to invest in building it themselves — not initially at least — to explore this very idea. That, plus the existing large market, are two reasons why investors have been ready to invest, even at a time when raising momney is getting a little trickier for startups. “Odilo is an innovative player in the high-growth educational content market, with an impressive product range, a vast content catalogue and best-in-class digital infrastructure,” said Francesco Canessa, a principal at Bregal Milestone, in a statement. “There is significant scope for internationalisation and scaling the platform – two value creation levers where Bregal Milestone has significant expertise. As a leader in its field with a strong, sticky customer base and a unique offering, ODILO is exactly the kind of business we look for, and we’re excited about the growth prospects ahead as we work together.”