Edtech LingoAce Expands to Indonesia after Receiving Funding

LingoAce, an educational startup from Singapore, announced its expansion to Indonesia after successfully raising a Series A funding of US$ 6 million (around IDR 84 billion) led by Sequoia Capital India and Shunwei Capital recently.

Indonesia became their first destination country as well as targeting Thailand. LingoAce’s expansion to Indonesia wants to take advantage of the momentum of the increasing use of online education services in line with distance learning policies due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

LingoAce believes that lifelong mastery of foreign languages ​​is one of the important elements in preparing children’s future, especially to face the increasingly globalized world of work. With LingoAce coming to Indonesia, parents are now starting to be able to prepare their children to be future-ready, with online and cross-border language learning products.

This learning method not only connects Indonesian students with experienced native-speaker teachers, but also offers a variety of interesting and efficient learning methods, tailored to the learning habits of young students who are familiar with the digital world.

“Therefore, we strive to continually improve our platform in order to provide more benefits to the Indonesian people,” said Hugh Yao, Founder and CEO of LingoAce.

Will Build Operational Offices in Indonesia

They plan to build an operational office in Indonesia with a team consisting of customer service, operations, and marketing. Later, LingoAce will recruit more than 500 local employees. For its first product, LingoAce will release a Mandarin online learning feature.

Hugh Yao as the Founder and CEO of LingoAce believes that mastering foreign languages ​​is one of the important elements in preparing children’s future, especially facing the increasingly global world of work.

Since its establishment in 2017, LingoAce has raised investments with a total value of US$ 16 million (around IDR 225 billion) in four funding rounds. Currently, they have more than 2,000 certified teachers who teach real-time learning individually and in small classes in Singapore, Beijing, Wuhan, Los Angeles and Bangkok.

LingoAce Indonesia’s Marketing Director Nirwanto Honsono said that through the fundraising led by Sequoia Capital India and Shunwei Capital, the company will officially expand to Indonesia as the first country in Southeast Asia.

“We have the vision to be the preferred platform for Indonesian parents for their children to learn languages ​​online. Therefore, we will focus on building a team and offering our products throughout Indonesia,” he said in a press release, Tuesday (11/24/2020).

Using Artificial Intelligent Technology

Furthermore, he explained that in its expansion the company plans to expand its operational capacity and build a team of local talents with a target of employing more than 500 local workers who will serve 200,000 students in Indonesia by 2022.

“We will build a comprehensive operational team, starting from customer service, day-to-day operations, and marketing, so that we can provide quality lessons to students in Indonesia, starting from big cities such as Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan and Bandung,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hugh Yao, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of LingoAce, said that the teaching of their platform utilizes multimedia, gamification features, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology based on research results, to produce effective Mandarin learning activities.

Just a note, the LingoAce startup was founded in 2017 and to date, it has provided lessons to more than 100,000 students in 80 countries. Targeted at students aged 4-15, the platform connects carefully selected professional Chinese teachers to deliver real-time learning in private and small group classes.