Publisher Macmillan’s corporate venturing unit has invested in two Brazil-based education technology companies, Veduca and Easyaula.
Veduca, a Brazil-based online video platform for educational content, raised $740,000 in its seed round from a consortium including Macmillan Digital Education.
Seed venture capital firm Mountain do Brasil led Veduca’s investment consortium, which also included accelerator 500 Startups.
Veduca shows videos in their original English language format, subtitled in Portuguese, while Easyaula is an online educational marketplace that makes it easy for people to learn anything from anyone.
Easyaula received seed funding and coaching from mentors at the 21212 Digital Accelerator Program.
Matthias Ick, managing director of Macmillan Digital Education, which was founded in 2012 as a UK-based subsidiary of Germany-based publisher Holtzbrinck, said: “This is a major step in our intention to provide a catalyst for the next phase of our ambitious plans in Brazil and the wider region. Together with Veduca and Easyaula, we will support and enhance the development of technology driven-education in Brazil. Both brands will play an important role in helping us reach our goal to support people in their life-long learning journey.”
Macmillan has invested in three technology-led start-up businesses over the past two years: Macmillan Digital Education, which invests into and builds consumer-focused educational services, such as Tutoria; Digital Science, which specialises in providing software solutions for scientists since its launch in 2010 and has also made corporate venturing investments in BioData, SureChem, Labtiva, 1DegreeBio, Bioraft and Symplectic; and Macmillan New Ventures, which discovers and develops technologies for educational development, such as I>clicker, Educational Benchmarking and PrepU,and was launched in June.