• The £19.3m Series A extension was co-led by existing investor Brighteye Ventures, the most active EdTech focused venture capital firm in Europe, and Adjuvo, an exclusive syndicate of private investors focused on innovative founder-led British companies 
• The significantly oversubscribed round also saw participation from Ascension Ventures, several family offices and prominent angel investors including the founders of Octopus Group, and Tim Throsby, Adjuvo member and former CEO of Barclays Bank Plc who now joins the Zen Educate board
• British schools spend over £2bn each year on temporary staff, which includes over £600m wasted on agency fees – Zen Educate is disrupting that model with its platform and has already saved schools £10m+ 
• This investment will be used to scale into new cities in the UK and expand further into the US, where Zen Educate is already seeing huge success

London, UK. – Zen Educate, a simple, streamlined platform that connects schools with temporary and full-time teachers and teaching assistants, has secured a £19.3m Series A extension round. The investment was led by Brighteye Ventures, Adjuvo and several notable private investors and family offices, including Simon Rogerson and Chris Hulatt, the founders of Octopus Group.

Zen Educate has previously raised £9.4m, bringing the total the company has raised to £28.7m. The new funding will continue to grow the platform across the UK, support further market expansion in the United States, where it has already seen explosive growth, and complete its first acquisitions to consolidate the market. The funding will also double the team headcount from 100 to 200 over the next six months. Zen Educate has tripled in size year-on-year and is approaching nearly one million hours of cover booked on its platform in the last 12 months.

Zen Educate has built a fairer, more ethical alternative to traditional agencies, removing the hassle of archaic processes. Its online platform provides a secure one-stop shop to solve a school’s staffing needs, giving schools and teachers an online alternative to recruitment agencies. It also provides teachers with all the useful information they need to work at each location and better ways to communicate and manage relationships with the schools. The startup has already saved the UK education system approximately £10m that would have been wasted on recruitment agency fees and connected thousands of teachers to job opportunities.

The platform uses proprietary software to perform an extensive series of checks during the teacher sign-up process to ensure all professionals listed are thoroughly vetted before a final manual review of each profile. 

Slava Kremerman, Co-Founder and CEO of Zen Educate, said: “This significantly oversubscribed extension to our Series A validates the progress we’ve been making in our mission to change the world of temporary work in schools. We are proud to say we have saved the UK education system millions of pounds each year, which is why we are excited about our growth and expansion into the US market.”

The US temporary staffing market is worth more than $16B per year and has a large gap for digitalisation which Zen Educate has already started to fill. Similar to the UK, there is an opportunity in the US to build a vertically integrated offering that offers significantly better outcomes for both sides of the education market.

Ben Wirz, Partner at Brighteye Ventures, continued investing in Zen Educate, commented, “We back leaders in EdTech and having witnessed the outstanding execution of the Zen Educate founders and the business’ growth in the UK and US, we’re delighted to be reinvesting. School staffing has become a more pressing need on both sides of the Atlantic in the wake of Covid. Zen Educate’s platform leverages technology to provide timely, high quality and affordable staffing – putting the company in a unique position to impact schools, teachers and students when the need has never been greater.”

Tim Throsby, newly appointed Non-Executive Director of Zen Educate, added, “I am very excited to join the Zen Educate Board. Having spent a lot of time with the team, I firmly believe this is an exceptional business doing genuine good in the world.”

Zen Educate is headquartered in London, with offices in three other UK cities and two American cities. The company has grown rapidly since it was founded in 2017 by Slava Kremerman and Oren Cohen. Kremerman previously was a member of the leadership team at Nutmeg, one of the UK’s most successful technology startups. Cohen most recently ran the UK office of Optimizely, a prominent and highly successful Silicon Valley technology company. 

For more information go to: https://www.zeneducate.com/

—ENDS—

Notes to Editors

Press Kit: Available here 

Press Contacts

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Cathy White

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About Zen Educate

Zen Educate is a simple, streamlined online platform connecting schools directly with teachers and teaching assistants, helping teachers earn more while saving schools money. Founded by Slava Kremerman and Oren Cohen, the company is on a mission to change the world of education recruitment. Headquartered in London with offices in three other UK cities and two in America. Since its launch in 2017, the company has tripled in size year-on-year and is approaching nearly 1 million hours of cover booked on its platform in the last 12 months.

Learn More: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter 

About Brighteye Ventures – Brighteye is one of the leading Edtech venture capital funds in Europe, leveraging deep experience and relationships in tech, education, media, and VC. Looks for exciting startups at the intersection of learning, entertainment and creativity to empower and expand the frontiers of human potential. Investing at Seed and Series A stages, we help portfolio companies refine products, build partnerships and scale across geographies. Brighteye Ventures are looking for entrepreneurs that use technology and industry knowledge to build competitive businesses that can become global leaders.

Learn More: Website |  LinkedIn | Twitter 

About Adjuvo 

Adjuvo is a network and investment syndicate that was founded in London in 2015. More than 130 experienced investors are committed to invest in early stage high growth British companies and be part of the journey to maximize their potential. True to the vision of Adjuvo “I help” the leadership team and network members are here to help the founders of portfolio companies by acting as advocates and supporters of entrepreneurship, constructive capitalism and job creation.

Learn More: Website