Brio, the ed-tech platform for measuring educational performance, reaches a value of 5.5 million euros (post-money evaluation) and announces the opening of a new round of investments through SeedBlink. The company thus reaches double value compared to September 2020, when it carried out the first financing campaign on the same crowdinvesting platform.
This new round of investments was led by businessmen Horia Manda and Valentin Tăbuș, partners in AXXESS Capital, who invested 550,000 euros, the two thus becoming shareholders of Brio.
The two investors are joined by a new round of financing open on SeedBlink, of 250,000 euros. The members of Brio Syndicate (the SPV constituted as a result of the previous listing on the platform), who already hold the quality of shareholder, exercised their right of preemption to investments a priori to the opening of the public offer. Thus, after exercising this right, the value available for the public offer is 150,000 euros.
“Less than a year and a half away from our first campaign on SeedBlink, Brio has grown at an accelerated pace and we have managed to do things that are significant for education in Romania, many for the first time, including: the first digital Olympics of mathematics, national literacy and digital literacy tests, history tests and the first integrated training program for teachers in Romania in the use of digital platforms. We still have important plans for our development and expansion, and the fact that we are now announcing a new round of investments is a confirmation of our successful path and a proof of investor confidence in our product,” said Dragoș Iliescu, CEO, Chief Scientist and founder of Brio.
The company’s representatives say that the corresponding funding for this round will be intended, firstly, to consolidate the product on the Romanian market, by developing a SaaS platform that will fully cover the testing and evaluation needs of any educational institution and, secondly, the development and the external launch of the test learning product that Brio develops using programmatic item generation algorithms and Artificial Intelligence.
“Two factors convince me to invest in a business: the quality of the group of people behind the product (this is the essential condition), and the real growth prospects of the business. In addition, in the specific case of Brio we saw – in addition to the immediate impact in the digital transformation of education in Romania, through scientific premises, aligned with the times we live in – the potential international application of intellectual property generated,” stated Horia Manda, investor.
In September 2020, Brio launched for the first time a round of financing on the investment platform in European technology Startups SeedBlink, when it managed to exceed the initial target proposed before the end of the campaign and raise 285,000 euros.
“Brio stands out for its strong leadership, financial results and potential market opportunities. Commitment to their users and the educational goal with social impact is a source of inspiration. The evolution of the company is supported by a truly differentiated platform, based on cognitive psychology, well-aligned with the basic curriculum for grades I-XII. We are delighted with the validation of the investors leading this round, Horia Manda and Valentin Tăbuș, and with the fact that we once again support the evolution plans of Brio through our community of investors,” said Andrei Dudoiu, Managing Partner at SeedBlink.
Approved by the Ministry of Education and Research, the Brio Testing System is designed based on the Romanian curriculum. The Brio platform offers tests in Mathematics, Romanian Language and History, but also in Literacy (functional literacy) and Digital Literacy and is currently used by over 100,000 users and registers over 3,000 active subscriptions and hundreds of thousands of tests.