2020 ANZ EdTech 50. Where are they now?

In November 2020, HolonIQ announced the annual ANZ EdTech 50 — a list of the 50 most promising EdTech startups headquartered in Australia and New Zealand. As we open applications for our annual 2021 ANZ EdTech 50, we take a look at where the 2020 cohort are now.

EdTech in Australia & New Zealand builds from a high quality education system and supports both learning outcomes directly as well as supporting and enabling education institutions to be more efficient, to deliver at scale, and to further digitize their offerings and business models. There is historical strength in these markets in distance education which, even before COVID, has translated to robust online learning solutions. Language learning and assisting international students also features and, in the Workforce learning segment, digital skill development, mentoring software and experiential learning solutions are also strong.

The Annual ANZ EdTech 50 recognizes the most promising EdTech startups based in Australia and New Zealand, which are privately owned and under 10 years old. Governments and the media, institutions and investors, schools and educators, influencers and talent leaders from across the region and around the world look to HolonIQ’s ANZ EdTech 50 as the benchmark for education innovation and to understand the dynamics of innovation in the market.

HolonIQ's Scoring Fingerprint

In 2020, HolonIQ’s Education Intelligence Unit evaluated 700+ EdTech companies from Australia and New Zealand, powered by data and insights from our Global Intelligence Platform and local experts. Each organization was assessed using our proprietary scoring engine and following HolonIQ’s startup scoring rubric. Our normalization algorithm ensures that individual scoring bias is eliminated to create an equitable baseline and allows experts to review their own ‘scoring fingerprint’ relative to other experts. HolonIQ’s startup scoring rubric covers the following dimensions:

Market. The quality and relative attractiveness of the specific market in which the company competes.
Product. The quality and uniqueness of the product itself.
Team. The expertise and diversity of the team.
Capital. The financial health of the company and in particular its ability to generate or secure sufficient funding.
Momentum. Positive changes in the size and velocity of the company over time.

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Where are they now?

Startups in the 2020 ANZ EdTech 50 have collectively raised over USD $600M, with $212M since the list was announced less than a year ago. The blockbuster fundraising in this period was GO1′s $200M Series D round, co-led by global and local investors, SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, AirTree Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. Other teams that have raised funding in the last 12 months include international student recruitment marketplace, Adventus ($8.5M), digital skills training startup FourthRev ($3.2M) and online course creation platform Coassemble ($1.2M). These startups join others in the ANZ market such as Studiosity ($10M) and Year13 ($7.7M), each representing broad investor confidence in digital solutions for education and up-skilling.

Exits, Acquisitions and Growth Activities

From last year’s list, online tutoring startup Cluey Learning IPO’d on the Australian Stock Exchange in December 2020, following other EdTech companies such as Keypath Education, OpenLearning and ReadyTech, which have also listed over the last few years. Other exits include nz-based Education Perfect, which is set to be acquired by global investment firm KKR, and Australian/US-based A Cloud Guru‘s acquisition by Pluralsight.

Beyond the numbers, teams from the 2020 ANZ EdTech 50 have been busy in the last 12 months supporting their customers and building global growth strategies and partnerships. Examples include E2Language partnering with Pearson to launch the Global Online Test Preparation Platform (GOTP), ClassCover and Cluey selected to support the COVID Intensive Learning Support tutors to Public Schools, Crimson Education launching an online K12 school, and Crimson Academy, and acquiring video platform Unfiltered. Practera partnered with Austrade to offer an industry experience program and Vygo launched an online mentoring academy.

Register for the 2021 ANZ EdTech 50 webinar to learn more about the 2020 cohort and of course, be the first to know the 50 companies selected as part of the 2021 ANZ EdTech 50.