South Korean edtech startup Mathpresso adds Google as an investor

Mathpresso, the Seoul-based edtech company behind QANDA, an AI-based learning app for K-12 students, announced today it has added Google as a new investor.

Google’s undisclosed investment is not part of its Series C raised in June, the company said without providing its valuation.

The additional investment event comes five months after its $50 million Series C, which brought its total funding to $105 million as of June. The company’s previous backers include SoftBank Venture Asia, MiraeAsset Venture Investment, Smilegate Investment, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation and Legend Capital.

Mathpresso expects to create synergies with Google in terms of its global market expansion and technological advancement.

More than 85% of QANDA’s users are outside of Korea, in Japan and Southeast Asia. The Seoul-headquartered startup has offices in Tokyo, Hanoi, Jakarta and Bangkok and offers seven languages: English, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese and Indonesian.

Mathpresso was founded in 2015 by co-CEO Ray Lee and Jake Lee, who developed QANDA as a 1:1 Q&A service platform. In 2016, Mathpresso launched QANDA, which provides detailed math solutions and personalized learning content catered to each user’s level. QANDA’s AI-based optical character recognition (OCR) technology, added in 2017, recognizes text and mathematical formulas in a photo and enables users to search for answers in seconds.

Approximately 10 million photos are uploaded every day on QANDA platform, the statement said. The company claims that the QANDA app has amassed over 45 million registered users and 3 billion education data points, with over 12 million monthly active users in 50 countries.

Mathpresso added new features on QANDA earlier this year, including the premium subscription model that offers unlimited “byte-sized” micro-video lectures and the community feature that enhances collaborative learning like an online study group.

“The investment by Google opens up exciting opportunities for Mathpresso and enhances our ability to serve students around the world,” said Chief Financial Officer of Mathpresseo Soo Nahm. “Together with the recent Series C funding, this investment will help us accelerate our global market expansion as well as our technological advancement.”

QANDA is available on Android, iOS and Web.