Leading up to the big reveal of our highest ranking Startups and Tech Companies for 2016 on 6 December 2016 at Techboard 2016, guest blogger Paul Towers from Startup Soda provided us with an overview of the the highest ranked startups in our edtech category. Over the coming weeks we will be taking a look at other industry categories but next time we will let you know how the companies ranked on Techboard during 2016.
Since the publication of this post the full ranking for 2016 has been released and we have added the edtech companies’ overall 2016 rank below.
Increasing interest, engagement and retention is a key requirement in any learning environment, whether that be at school, university or the workplace. Over the past few years we have seen an explosion in the number of Edtech startups popping up to tackle issues in this area. Today, we take a look at the top five edtech startups on Techboard (not listed in order).
Course Genius (2016 rank: 25)
Course Genius is another online e-learning training platform for company employees. In addition to tackling the internal training requirements of organisations, they also provide an avenue for people to develop their own content for sale through their own network/website.
Pricing for Course Genius starts at just $49 per month for up to five users and provides all of the functionality the business or training organisation requires to distribute content and track completion rates.
Velpic (2016 rank: 18)
Velpic is a video eLearning platform in the cloud. It allows users to easily create, manage and schedule content within their workplace. This helps remove the friction that is all too common in workplace training environments and provides a comprehensive set of permissions to create programs for an individual or entire team.
In addition to their online portal Velpic also provides a mobile application to ensure the user can learn in a time and place that is convenient to them.
The company has a current market cap of ~$24million and trades on the ASX with the stock ticker: VPC
Sciosity (2016 rank: 82)
Sciosity is an Edtech company that aims to revolutionise skill based learning and assessment by integrating virtual reality, artificial intelligence and analytics in programs developed for universities, schools, the resource and defence sectors.
The company handles the entire project lifecycle, from initial concept through to development and delivery of the VR application. Providing this life like simulation of education and training scenarios the company aims to help reduce workplace injuries and create job ready candidates.
SEQTA (2016 rank: 34)
SEQTA was founded by Grant and Sharon Grosser in 2006 and is an all-in-one teaching and learning environment for teachers, students and their parents. The idea for SEQTA came from the frustration Grant saw teachers face as a Principal. At the time existing solutions were poorly designed and largely unwanted or used by the teaching faculty.
As a result Grant and Sharon left their jobs to go full time on the project and recruited a couple of investors to help them achieve the mission. Ten years later SEQA more provides more than 455 schools, 30,000 teachers and 245,000 students with instant online access to everything they need to play their role in the school’s learning environment.
Moodle (2016 rank: 87)
Moodle is the fifth and final startup in our list today. One aspect that makes Moodle unique is the fact that the platform is completely open source. The Moodle platform allows educators to create an online and flexible learning environment that allows students to complete and collaborate on activities.
Moodle HQ is the private company that manages the open source project and also provides support to the community. In 2004 they launched the Moodle Partner program to help monetize the platform and they now have more than 80 partners from across the globe.
Author Bio: Paul Towers is a 3x Entrepreneur and Founder of Task Pigeon, a web app that makes it simple to create, assign and manage the tasks you and your team work on each day. Paul also founded Startup Soda, a daily network of newsletters that highlight the best articles, blog posts and tactical resources from startup ecosystems around the world.
