EdTech venture Quipper was founded 2010 by DeNA veteran Masayuki Watanabe (渡辺雅之) in London

by Gerhard Fasol

Recruit expands from classified-type magazine sites into education

On April 1, 2015, Japanese media giant Recruit acquired London based but largely Japanese managed EdTech venture Quipper for US$ 39 million, providing good returns for three investors, Atomico, Benesse and Globis Capital Partners, who had invested a total of US$ 10.1 million over the period 2011-2014.

Quipper represents a new class of global ventures: largely Japanese entrepreneurs and managers founded a venture in London, taking advantage of London’s global business and venture platform, and especially UK’s very strong education infrastructure and education industry, and developing global EdTech business.

Quipper

Quipper is an EdTech venture developing and marketing quiz based e-learning apps platform for smartphones.

Learning content is provided by teachers, experts, publishing houses, teachers and others.

Founded on December 1, 2010 in London (UK).

US$ 10.1 million funding was invested by three investors in three stages:

• Seed, Oct 1, 2011: £ 0.4 million by Atomico
• Series A, May 18, 2012: £ 2.3 million by Globis Capital Partners and Atomico
• Series A, March 6, 2014: $5.8 million by Atomico and Benesse
• Total: US$ 10.1 million

Current Quipper team is predominantly Japanese:

• Masayuki Watanabe (渡辺雅之), CEO
• Masatomo Nakano, CTO
• Takuya Nomma, Marketing Director
• Yosuke Arakaki, Yuta Funase, Joseph Ganderson, Ryan Guerrero, Yusuke Kaneko, Takeyoshi Mizusawa, Satoru Tanabe, Mai Ueno, Annette Tsuda, Business Development

Recruit

Recruit is a Japanese media company with its own original innovative business model. Recruit started with job advertising magazines, and has developed a wide range of advertising platforms for job search, weddings, used cars, and many other areas. Find a description and analysis of Recruit in our Japan Media Report.

Japan’s media markets – research report

Japan media (14th edition)

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