Cakap Closes Series A+ Round Worth of 42,6 Billion Rupiah

Cakap, an edtech platform focused on language learning, today (22/12) announced the series A+ funding worth of $3 million or equivalent to 42.6 billion Rupiah. This round was led by the Heritas Venture Fund, participated also Strategic Year Holdings and some previous investors, including Investidea Ventures and Prasetia Dwidharma.

Fresh funds will be channeled to strengthening human resources, technology development and domestic expansion. Regarding Cakap, this pandemic is seen as a good momentum to introduce a more in-depth online education model. In the community, social restrictions and school activities from home encourage the adoption of learning technology at various levels of education.

Since the beginning of this year, Cakap is said to grow up to 10x. As of today, the application on the Google Play Store has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times; Meanwhile, according to Similar Web data, Cakap.com visitors are to continue growing, from 550 thousand in June 2020 to 1.35 million in late November 2020.

However, the competition for edtech services for language learning is getting crowded. Apart from Cakap, there are several startups that offer similar services both from local and global players, such as Bahaso, LingoAce, Elsa Speak, Duolingo, etc.

Meanwhile, according to the Edtech Report 2020, the startup ecosystem in the education sector has formed progressively, the majority are filled with learning service providers with a variety of coverage.

Edtech startups landscape statistic in Indonesia / DSResearch

"The key to success during this pandemic is understanding the Indonesian landscape to create accurate educational solutions with solving capability in the target market, where access to high quality education is not only required by students in big cities but also throughout the nation, including third-tier cities and remote areas,” Cakap's Co-founder & CEO Tomy Yunus said.

He also said that Indonesia is one of the big education markets in Indonesia. There are at least more than 3 million teachers in 300 thousand schools. The number of students is fantastic, reaching over 60 million - over time, they also tend to become more tech-savvy and aware of the internet.

"We believe in the long-term potential of the education technology market in Indonesia, and we are very excited to support Cakap in its efforts to utilize and increase the demand for high quality education amidst the increasing disposable income of the general public," Chairman of Strategic Year Conrad Tsang said.

In mid-July 2020, Cakap has expanded the learning scope through the UpSkill app. It is focused on content such as entrepreneurship, career development and self-development. They implement a module base and topic base systems, therefore, users can choose issues, topics, and packages according to their individual needs.

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian