Crehana wants to make history in the educational technology market. At the end of 2020, the startup celebrated the closing of its series A investment, which allowed it to grow in Latin America and create a Spanish-speaking community, made up of 5 million registered students in 25 countries.
Now, the online education platform, founded by Diego Olcese and Rodolfo Dañino in 2015, has just raised $ 70 million in a series B round, led by the General Atlantic fund.
This round of investment brings Crehana’s capital to 94 million dollars. As part of the transaction, Luis Cervantes, the fund’s CEO, and Zeev Thepris, its vice president, will join the company’s board of directors.
Diego Olcese, co-founder and CEO of Crehana, assures that they will take advantage of the money to expand their learning ecosystem at the business level, since more than 50% of their income comes from employee training programs.
Currently, he details, the educational programs most requested by companies are leadership, soft skills, data and analytics and digital marketing, due to the change in the labor market caused by the pandemic.
But the objective is to expand the offer and give human talent professionals automated machine learning solutions and tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI), which allow them to effectively identify the gaps in their work teams.
With the investment, Crehana also seeks to consolidate in Mexico, Colombia and Peru, which are the strongest countries in Latin America where it operates. And next October, it will open an office in Sao Paolo, Brazil, as part of its expansion plan.
Today, Crehana has a staff of 220 employees. Olcese estimates to hire 180 more people this year, of which 35 or 50 will be to attend the office in Brazil. The expectation is to maintain the triple-digit growth that the firm has had in the last 18 months, thanks in part to the boom in online education.
The entrepreneur is convinced that the traditional education industry is experiencing a disruption and that small teams, like his, can achieve big changes in the sector. “We are seeing more people exchanging traditional education for shorter, more labor market-oriented degrees,” he says.
The Peruvian entrepreneur, who studied Business Engineering, associates the investment rounds he has received with the effectiveness of his business model, that is, short online courses that allow him to acquire technical and soft skills to develop particular projects.
Their differentiating value, he points out, is that they themselves manage and control the entire value chain, from the selection of teachers, to the production, distribution and consumption of content.
Today it has more than 700 courses, which teach more than 100,000 techniques and skills, under a SaaS model, flexible and based on the cloud. Users can have access to the platform, individually, buying a subscription with a cost from $ 100 per year.
Among the main investors that have opted for Crehana are Mountain Nazca, Salesforce Ventures, Rethink Education, ALIVE Ventures, IFC and Dila Capital.
The rise of digital education
The pandemic was a springboard for distance education. The study on Online Education in Mexico, conducted between April and May 2021 by the Internet MX Association to 4,484 professionals who are studying or who intend to study, found that there is already more interest in the options that involve the online modality .
Of the changes brought by COVID-19, few people had to acquire a device to adapt to the digital modality. But they did have to increase Internet bandwidth.
In the next 12 months, only 24% are interested in taking an educational program in person. The rest prefer the online or mixed mode, due to the flexibility of schedules and costs. According to the study, online education has an average expenditure of 3,800 pesos per month, and the main obstacle that students face is the lack of financial solvency, followed by the lack of time.
Under the mixed model, they prefer to study undergraduate, engineering and master’s degrees; and in the online mode, courses and diplomas. On the other hand, people who do not have a job do opt for the face-to-face format.
Of the 63% of people interested in studying, 36% of them do not have a job and 27% do. And of the 37% of people who are currently studying, any educational program, 20% do not work and 17% do.
The main objectives of those who continue their studies are to increase their knowledge, obtain a new job or a better salary. In addition to flexibility in the curriculum, content focused on the labor market and learning through practical cases are the most important factor for those who decide to continue their academic training.
