Hello World Kids, a Jordanian EdTech business, has closed their latest investment round for an undisclosed amount. Vision Ventures joined the Pre-Series A round, which was led by Daam Almonsha’at Holding and Oman Technology Fund.
Hello World Kids was founded in 2015 with the goal of providing unique and engaging coding education to children at home or in the classroom. HelloCode, an online interactive platform that offers coding curricula for schools, was launched in 2020 with the purpose of empowering new generations with critical skills such as problem-solving, analytical thinking, and data analysis by teaching them text-based coding science in simple and engaging ways. The HelloCode platform is widely acknowledged as the largest Arab community for teaching programming to children.
Within the MENA VC ecosystem, the EdTech industry is slowly becoming one of the most rapidly growing industries. With the outbreak of the pandemic, the sector drew the interest of both consumers and investors. Following a four-year streak of increased capital, MENA-based EdTech startups have seen a 525% funding increase since 2018, raising excellent rounds in 2021 YTD across geographies. Jordan’s Abwaab, which acquired Pakistan’s Edmatrix and raised $20 million from investors like BECO Capital, has been one of the leading EdTech firms this year.
Hello World Kids’ founder and CEO, Hanan Khader, started the business because she believes that if given the correct tools, children can accomplish wonderful things. She made the decision to facilitate the development of such tools and educate children programming through HelloCode.
She went on to say,”Our mission is to simplify the coding education for kids, that’s why we have created a new programming language, which we called SmoothY; a unique programming language specifically designed for children to serve as a transitional bridge to the command-based programming languages. Once children learn SmoothY, they will be capable of reading and writing code using Python, Java, JavaScript, or any other professional programming languages in the world.”
Today, Hello World Kids has over 350,000 projects contributed by children younger than 12 years and over 4 million lines of code recorded by children on the platform utilizing SmoothY. Ahmed Diab, CEO of Yazeed Al-Rajhi & Brothers Holding and Authorized Manager of Da’am Al-Monsha’at Limited Holding, commented on their investment, saying, “We truly believe in the importance of EduTech ventures, and the unique importance of providing the coming generations with the right tools to build their future skill-set. We could see clearly the big ambition to grow the business, in addition to the true passion for making the learning process of programming a joyful journey for our kids. These factors were the main determinants to invest in Hello World Kids, and lead the investment round.”
Maha AlBalushi, Managing Director at Oman Technology Fund shared, “In OTF Wadi we are eager to invest in the Ed-tech sector which aligns with Oman 2040 vision and have a myriad of untapped opportunities that are worth exploration and investment. Especially after the Covid-19 pandemic, the EdTech solution grabbed the attention of both the consumers and the investors significantly. Therefore, we are proud to co-lead this round in HWK as we see the right dynamics of the team and a huge potential for expansion and growth.”
Hello World Kids has launched a big awareness campaign targeting the Saudi market with the tagline (Barmej-min-Badri) or (Start-Coding-Early) to emphasize the skills gained by children when they learn coding early, such as creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking, and the positive reflection on the kids’ personalities.
Hanan concluded by adding that Hello World Company would also be finalizing a new investment round soon to continue their expansion into the Saudi, Egyptian, and Pakistani markets. The purpose of the current round is to kick off the expansion activities in the Saudi market.