Catalyst Romania Fund II, one of the most important venture capital funds in the region, joins the Adservio platform in its efforts to scale the business and expand on other markets in Europe with an investment of €2 million.
Adservio has over 14 years of experience in the Education Technology market. Today, the platform supports over 1.000 schools in their digital transformation journey, through innovation of educational and management processes, offering a modern tool to help educators and students.
„I have rarely met founders as driven as Alex and young EdTech companies that have demonstrated impact in solving a real need for teachers, students, and parents as Adservio. With access to broadband and with a higher technology penetration in the educational system, the majority of students are now very comfortable with online learning platforms. As a result, we believe that, in the future, any technology that can be combined with in-person education will become more appealing to students, because it will enable them to assimilate knowledge more effectively. Catalyst Romania is committed to helping Adservio scale up and become the most relevant tech solution to support the learning and teaching processes, not only in the Romanian educational ecosystem but also internationally.”, said Alin Stanciu, Partner at Catalyst Romania.
The investment will support the expansion on the local and international market, the expansion of the portfolio of clients and partners and the development of new features.
„This round of financing helps us in taking the next step to scale up our business: going abroad. We founded Adservio when the global EdTech market was still in its early days. Since then, we focused on meeting the digitization needs of local schools in Romania. We have contributed to the launch of a pilot program through which the Romanian Ministry of Education recognized the exclusive use of the digital grade book, a measure that gives us hope for a faster transformation of digitization in schools. EdTech technologies have gained momentum during the Covid-19 pandemic, and it was the same for us: we integrated new technologies and developed new modules, together with school managers, teachers, parents and students”, said Alexandru Holicov, founder of Adservio.
“For 2022, we aim to increase our team, attracting passionate people, for whom education is an important value. Together we will further improve the user experience and create new solutions for schools to better prepare their students for the future“, added the founder.
The pandemic period accelerated the digitization of the education system. If 14 years ago the Adservio digital grade book was used in several schools in Iasi, and before the closure of schools, the platform was used in about 200 schools, today Adservio is the most popular and most complex educational platform in Romania (besides the free platforms), with more than 750 000 monthly active users .
The adservio.education platform is available in 9 languages and has web and mobile versions. One of the key differentiators are the state-of-the-art security measures and data protection.
Adservio helps K-12 schools to be more effective and strengthen their connection with the families. The solution is suitable in any context (face to face, online and hybrid). Thus, educational institutions can facilitate the access to learning with modern tools in any suitable context, face to face, but also for students who cannot attend classes due to various reasons. In addition, parents can see in real time the school situation and can offer better support to their children by simply accessing the Adservio app. This has encouraged the prevention of school dropout rates and a significantly lower school absenteeism rates.
About Adservio
Adservio has over 14 years of experience in the EdTech industry. The educational management platform helps high schools, schools and kindergartens in the process of digital transformation. School managers, teachers and other school staff effectively manage educational and administrative processes. Thus, students have a learning context relevant to their future. The Adservio solution is recognized by the Ministry of Education and has made an important contribution to the pilot project launched in 2021 through which educational institutions can use only the digital grade book. The Adservio team consists of 40 people passionate about technology and education. More information at www.adservio.education.
About Catalyst Romania
Catalyst Romania is a leading venture capital investor in Romanian technology companies having the potential to become regional leaders or global challengers, currently investing from its second-generation fund, Catalyst Romania Fund II, after also raising and successfully investing in the past the first Romanian tech venture fund backed by the JEREMIE Romania initiative, starting from 2012. The team, comprising of Marius Ghenea, Alin Stanciu, Jozsef Köver, Alina Georgescu and Antonela Dragomir, will continue to primarily target investments in high growth sectors including Technology & Internet, Media & Communications and Technology-Enabled Services. Catalyst Romania is also supported by 3TS Capital Partners, which serves as an extension of the Catalyst team and provides international expansion support for portfolio companies in Europe and the US. For further information, please visit catalystromania.com.
About EIF
The European Investment Fund is part of the European Investment Bank Group. Its central mission is to support Europe’s micro and small and medium-sized enterprises through access to finance. The EIF develops venture capital and growth instruments, guarantees and microfinance instruments, which specifically target this market segment. Through its role, the EIF promotes EU objectives in support of innovation, research and development, entrepreneurship, growth, and employment.
About InnovFin Equity Programme
The InnovFin Equity programme – managed by the EIF – is part of “InnovFin – EU Finance for Innovators”, an initiative launched by the European Commission (EC) and the EIB Group in the framework of Horizon 2020. InnovFin Equity provides equity investments and co-investments to or alongside investment funds, focusing on companies in their early stages of development, operating in innovative sectors covered by Horizon 2020. The aim is to develop an extensive portfolio of funds, mobilizing €4-5bn of investments in businesses established or active in the EU and Horizon 2020 Associated Countries.
About Jeremie Romania
JEREMIE Romania is a set of financial instruments initially financed from Romania’s structural funds for the 2007-2013 programming period. At the end of the programming period, under a new agreement signed in September 2020, the EIF continues to manage, for and on behalf of the Government of Romania, funds that were reimbursed from the initial implementation, called JEREMIE Reflows.
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