- New Zealand’s Crimson Education, which has built a tech platform and consulting service to help students identify top schools and what they need to do in terms of academic and other activity to get in, has closed a US$5 million round of funding.
- With this latest investment, the company is now valued at US$245 million post-money, a big jump on the US$160 million valuation Crimson had in 2016 when Tiger Global invested US$30 million.
- This latest is a small but strategic round: The money is coming from Solborn Investment, the VC arm of the Korean holding company Solborn, and it’s specifically aimed at helping Crimson build out its business in that country (Korea has a huge population of young people who are very keen to study outside the country).
- The startup has raised US$42 million to date, and from what we understand it’s quietly gearing up to raise another round to double down on another new market for the company: students in the U.S., looking for better guidance to get into schools in the U.S.
- The leap in Crimson’s valuation is due to the startup’s success, both in terms of student achievements and the business model that has been built around this.
- The company currently works with 1,500 tutors and has had 20,000 students use its platform to date.
- There have been more than 60 offers to Crimson students for places at Ivy League schools; a further 160+ to Oxford, Cambridge and other competitive schools; and more than 500 successful applications to the top 50 universities in the U.S.
