CCKF, an international education technology firm, has closed a €5 million new fundraising round led by Leaf Investments, the venture capital arm of Folens, the Irish educational publisher founded in 1958.
The funding will allow Dublin-headquartered CCKF, whose adaptive learning product is called Realizeit, to expand further into the United States, where it has already won significant contracts as well as into new markets.
Career Education Corporation (CEC), an American education company listed on the Nasdaq with a market capitalisation of over $370 million, has also invested in CCKF as part of the new fundraising.
CEC already uses CCKF’s adaptive-learning technology to teach its students. Both Leaf Investments and the American company have previously invested in CCKF which has raised €11 million since it was founded in 2007.
CCKF's three founders David Collery, John Paul Keane and Frank Claffey, previously created CCM Software Services, an education administration and scheduling software firm which was sold for €20 million in 2002.
Mr Collery told The Irish Times he was stepping down as chief executive of CCKF following the investment but was remaining as an adviser on innovation.
Manoj Kulkarni, previously the chief technology officer at CEC, is CCKF's chief executive.
“Manoj was my first customer in America [with CEC],” Mr Collery said. “He has the executive experience and the belief in what the platform can do to expand and grow it. We want to continue to grow in the US and globally. Our customers want to grow their international student base and we can help them do that.”
Mr Collery said part of his new role would be to help CCKF move into helping charities and philanthropic foundations to deliver online learning and training in emerging markets.
Mr Kulkarni said CCKF was already growing rapidly in the United States and, along with its CEC contract, it was also working with the University of Texas, the University of Central Florida and other large American organisations.
“We have developed a disruptive way of learning. Our technology enables the individualism of learning and delivers better results for students and teachers,” he said. “This is not a rule-based system of learning. It is adaptive and is continuously learning.”
In an earnings call on November 6th, Scott Steffey, president and chief executive of CEC, highlighted the importance of adaptive learning technology to its business to investors.
“Adaptive learning is changing the nature of higher education by measuring real-time knowledge growth minute by minute,” he said, “and understanding the material on a student-by-student basis.”
Leaf Investments is an early- stage investor in learning technologies, backed by the Folens publishing group.
It has a portfolio of investments that include StoryToys, a publisher of digital interactive children’s content and SureWash, a hand-hygiene learning system for hospital wards.
John Cadell and David Moffitt, the chief executive and chairman of Folens respectively, both sit on the advisory board of Leaf.
