Riyadh headquartered Noon Academy, one of the fastest-growing Edutech start-ups in the Middle East with over three million registered users, announced the launch of a standalone office in Bengaluru recently.
Located at 100 feet road, Indiranagar, the start-up's new premises in the city will house the company's rapidly expanding core technology division that is based exclusively in India.
The start-up aims to introduce innovative products on the platform to bring together 50 million students and tutors from around the world in a variety of interactive digital academic environments by 2023.
Through a series of advancements in Noon Academy's central offering - an online learning community for students to engage with peers and tutors, the technology team in India conceptualised, designed and developed a full-fledged platform that offers learning interactions in multiple settings.
Through a mix of free and premium subscription models, users can participate in virtual classrooms and live group study sessions or access one-on-one tutorials on demand.
Currently comprising 40 engineers, the technology team has built the platform available on the web, iOS and Android to accommodate learning modules in various subjects, including Mathematics, Science, English, and Arabic.
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A proof of the team's success is the fact that on average, students spend over 60 minutes on the app per visit, vastly exceeding the Edtech industry average of fourteen minutes per visit.
The company recently concluded the Series A round of funding for USD 8.6 million, jointly led by leading venture capital firms Raed Ventures and STV. The funding, the largest ever received by any Edutech firm in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) was also contributed by several prominent angel investors in the region.
Noon Academy launched its India operations in April 2017 and is presently focused on hiring senior technology talent to grow its core technology team, which will support the company's expansion plans. The start-up is strategising to make deeper inroads in the MENA region while also eyeing entry in geographies with high student density, such as Central Asia and South-East Asia.
"We at Noon are passionate about harnessing technology to make studying fun, engaging and affordable to the masses. We are growing at a very rapid pace in Saudi and Egypt, where our registered user base has increased by 50 per cent from two million to three million, in less than seven months. Over the past year, we have transformed our product that was localised to the Middle East market, to a highly engaging global platform that will scale a 10X growth, which we anticipate in the coming months and years", said Mohan M, Head of Engineering, Noon Academy.
"Our priority at present is to expand our technology team to help us drive the key focus areas for the coming year. The immediate goal is to build an open platform and develop technology-enabled operations for seamless expansion across the MENA region and beyond. We intend to improve engagement and retention on the platform by accelerating the network effect. Our talent consolidation will also support us in fulfilling our vision to build data products that help students establish strong networks with their peers and teachers who could be their study partners for life on our platform", he added.
"While we are very proud of our organic growth, we keep a close watch on our Work Happiness Index. We believe that creating a happy environment for passionate engineers who are aligned with our core values is the only way to beat our ambitious goal of building a social learning platform for 50 million students by 2023", said John Mark, Global Head of People Operations.
Founded in 2013 by Saudi entrepreneurs by Mohammed Aldhalaan and Dr Abdulaziz AlSaeed, Noon Academy has emerged as a success story in the dramatic process of digitization that is underway in the Middle East.
The start-up's promising potential to provide access to high-quality education at affordable costs has enabled it to grow quickly from a simple test preparation tutorial site to an online community of over three million students in the K-12 range and over 1500 certified tutors.
While 60 per cent of its users are based in Saudi Arabia, 40 per cent of Noon Academy's consumers are from Egypt. The start-up, which is the only Edutech firm in the region, has a 140 plus team that is spread across Saudi Arabia, Egypt and India.
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